OSCE border mission renewal tests Russia’s Minsk commitment

Russia’s ‘reluctance’ to extend the OSCE Special Monitoring
Mission (SMM) in Donbas signals that it has rejected the Minsk agreements,
Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of
Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov, told ICTV on Sept. 7. Resnikov pointed out that the
OSCE SMM  is a condition of the Minsk Agreement.

The statement comes after the U.S. announced on Sept
2. that Russia had “indicated that it will not join consensus to extend the
mission’s mandate and financing arrangement at the end of September”.

James Hydzik: The Russian
move can be seen as a response to the Sept. 1 meeting of Presidents Zelensky
and Biden in Washington. And this is not the first time that Russia has made
moving forward difficult. March 2021 saw similar issues, as unian.info reported
at the time.

However, the actual ending of the OSCE SMM, however
flawed as it is, would indicate a deterioration of the situation both on the
ground and officially. Reporting on the sites the SMM team monitors keeps the
war in the public eye to a greater degree than otherwise possible. The momentum
generated by the continued discussions helps keep diplomacy alive. While the
immediate and direct effects of the SMM’s closure would be minimal, it would be
damaging symbolically, and possibly a warning sign.