Putin supports Donbas peacekeeping mission, names conditions

Russian President
Vladimir Putin told a Sept. 5 press conference that he supports an
international peacekeeping mission in occupied Donbas. “I believe the presence
of peacekeepers – we don’t even have to say peacekeepers, but those people that
will ensure the safety of the OSCE mission – is entirely relevant and I don’t
see anything bad there,” he said, as reported by Interfax. “Quite the opposite,
I believe this would help resolve problems in southeastern Ukraine.”

Putin also
enumerated his conditions, starting with the mission’s purpose as being
exclusively to ensure the safety of OSCE workers. The peacekeeping mission
should be limited to the separation line only, not other territories, and international authorities must work
with the leaders of the self-declared republics to separate the forces and
remove hardware before the mission’s arrival. Putin ordered his foreign
ministry to submit these proposals to the UN Security Council for review.

In response,
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement that it has ordered its UN
representative to conduct consultations on the Russian proposal. Ukraine
rejects the Russian proposal of reaching agreement on the mission with the
illegal armed formations in Donbas. The statement also stressed that Ukraine
will not accept the presence of Russian citizens in a UN peacekeeping mission
in Donbas. In her turn, Ukrainian Parliament’s Deputy Speaker Iryna Gerashchenko
rejected the proposal limiting the mission’s presence to the separation line,
insisting that it was a temporary feature and not the Ukrainian state border.
The mission will have to encompass all of the territory of Russian-occupied
Donbas, she said.