Moscow stands for broader support of OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine - FM Lavrov

PARIS, February 24. /TASS/. The Normandy Four states - Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, will be promoting initiative on broader financing as well as the increase of personnel and equipment of the monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. "As it was ordered by [Normandy Four] leaders on February 12 in Minsk, we spoke for the extension of the mandate of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, for supplementing it with additional personnel, equipment and finances," Lavrov said after the talks of the Normandy Four top diplomats in Paris. "We will be promoting this initiative at the OSCE headquarters," the Russian foreign minister added. According to Lavrov, "my colleagues, first of all from Germany and France, expressed opinion that the most important is not waiting for the last gunshot to be fired but to immediately start the pullout of the heavy weaponry." "In this regard the steps, currently taken by representatives of the LPR and DPR, received a positive evaluation," Lavrov said. "We have received information that representatives of the LPR and DPR agreed with the Ukrainian military on a plan concerning the first stage of the heavy weaponry pullout. If this information is confirmed I will consider it an important progress." The Belarusian capital of Minsk hosted on February 12 summit talks of Normandy Four leaders - Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The 16-hour marathon summit negotiations ended in a package of agreements, which in particular envisaged ceasefire between the Ukrainian conflicting sides starting from midnight on February 15. Prior to the summit talks Minsk also hosted the meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine involving Ukraine’s ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Kiev’s special representative for humanitarian issues Viktor Medvedchuk, the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, and Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and OSCE’s envoy Heidi Tagliavini, who both acted as mediators. As a result of the meeting, it was announced that an agreement was reached on the ceasefire in certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, the heavy weaponry pullout and measures on a long-term political settlement of the crisis. The ceasefire agreement reached at the talks in Minsk in mid-February was not the first during the military conflict in Ukraine, which erupted almost a year ago. The previous ceasefire between Kiev authorities and defense forces of the self-proclaimed republics in the southeast of Ukraine was reached on September 5 with the mediation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). However, numerous violations of the ceasefire, which took effect the same day, have been reported since. The situation in the southeast of Ukraine deteriorated further with the start of this year as military clashes intensified resulting in numerous casualties on both conflicting sides. The deterioration in Ukraine prompted a diplomatic blitz from Hollande and Merkel early this month as they went first for talks with Poroshenko in Kiev on February 5 and then met with Putin in Moscow the other day. Currently, the conflicting sides in Ukraine say combat activity on the separation line has decreased. Before and after the Minsk meeting, the leaders have held regular telephone conversations in the Normandy format. The sides have agreed to continue them in the future. Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Ukraine’s embattled east as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, launched in mid-April 2014 to regain control over parts of the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics. Read more