OSCE Reports On Situation In Ukraine's Southeast Becoming Unreliable - DPR Head

(@FahadShabbir)

OSCE Reports on Situation in Ukraine's Southeast Becoming Unreliable - DPR Head

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd May, 2021) The regular reports of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine are becoming more vague, which does not contribute to the Donbas peace efforts, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) told Sputnik.

"Now, if you read the reports, they are, unfortunately, very hard to sort out. Even the most blatant violations can be interpreted differently," Denis Pushilin said, adding that such reports cannot be used as the basis for mediation efforts.

Pushilin told Sputnik that OSCE monitors have become more vague and less informative in their reports on the situation in Ukraine's southeast (Donbas).

"Now, we often see that they are siding with the position of one of the parties to the conflict," Pushilin said, recalling that in the past, the OSCE reports were different and "you could tell which side of the conflict was responsible for this or that ceasefire violation."

The ongoing conflict in southeastern Ukraine, where the Ukrainian military launched a special operation against the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics in 2014, has killed thousands of people.

The Normandy Four format , which includes Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine, was established in June 2014 to mediate the conflict after the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known together as Donbas, proclaimed independence following what they considered to be a coup in Kiev in February of that year. Despite several ceasefire agreements reached under the Normandy format, the Donbas conflict continues.

The OSCE SMM was deployed in Donbas on March 21, 2014 at the Ukrainian government's request. The mission is unarmed and aims to observe and report on the situation in southeastern Ukraine, as well as facilitate dialogue among all parties to the conflict.

Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Sputnik that the OSCE leadership is trying to avoid publishing fair data on the situation in Donbas, since all statistics on civilian injuries point to the fact that in the overwhelming majority of cases it is Kiev that begins the strikes thereby forcing the Donbas militia to retaliate.