The Ministry of Foreign Affairs considers it unacceptable that some OSCE participants states block decision to extend the mandate of the Special Monitoring Mission in Donbas for the next 12 months. Ukraine calls on all participants to come to a consensus. This is said in the statement of the foreign ministry.
If no consensus is reached on extending the mandate, the curtailment of the OSCE SMM will only play into the hands of the Russian Federation, the ministry notes.
"Illegal military activities of the armed formations of the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine will remain out of sight of the international community, the international recording of violations by the aggressor state will cease, which may lead to further uncontrolled escalation," the statement said.
The current mandate of the mission expires on 31 March. The Foreign Ministry stressed that already from the beginning of April, the OSCE may lose its key instrument for helping to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict. The non-renewal of the SMM mandate will deal a serious blow to the OSCE's credibility as a regional security organization, the security implementation of the provisions of the Minsk agreements and the Normandy format agreements will be critically complicated without monitoring the mission.
"We call on all parties to abandon their destructive position, join the consensus and make it possible to continue the activities of the OSCE SMM in Ukraine," the statement says.
