Kiev politicians and media figures have some right to be upset - they have been rightly assured after all that the mission of the OSCE is to find Russians and Russian weapons everywhere. But something is happening at the OSCE.
The findings were also discussed in Foreign Policy by the OSCE First Deputy Chairman Alexander Hug, answering the question about the official position of the organization on Russia's participation in the conflict in the Donbass.
But did the OSCE find any evidence of Russian involvement?
"If the question is what we saw on the ground, then we have not seen direct evidence. But we have seen that convoys enter Ukraine in the middle of the night in those areas where there is no official crossing. In one frontier area, we confirmed this with video recording that we made public. We saw certain types of weapons, which we described in detail, including electronic warfare equipment," said the deputy chairman of the OSCE SMM.At the same time, he clarified that the representatives of the mission had a talk with the militias of Donbass captured by Ukraine, who claimed that they were representatives of the Russian armed forces.
"We have seen men with insignia of the Russian Federation, but you can buy such a jacket anywhere. We also saw the insignia of Germany, Spain and others - but also Russians," added Hug.
But such vague and inconclusive language angered the Ukrainian media.
For example, the Kiev online edition Apostrophe reported on the Hug interview as follows: "They did not notice: they were noted in the OSCE with an absurd statement about the war in the Donbass".
Interestingly, according to the UN report, there is a non-international armed conflict in the Donbass.
In addition, Kiev was embarrassed by the statement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called the conflict in the Donbass a civil war.
Comment: The war in Ukraine is within its state boundaries and thus is definitely a civil war, albeit one provoked from the outside by NATO.