Ukraine's Permanent Representative to UN Volodymyr Yelchenko says Ukraine intends to launch talks within the United Nations on the possibility of deploying a UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas.

"We have a certain action plan and we know what we will do first. One way or another, it will be linked with the situation in Donbas, to be more precise in the context of a peacekeeping mission's possible deployment in the east of Ukraine. As you know, this initiative is currently being blocked by Russia. But we will try to find approaches to resolve this issue," he said in an interview with the Apostrophe online publication.

As UN practice shows, it takes months from the start of talks until a mission's deployment, Yelchenko said, adding that, for this reason, it would be a lengthy process.

Apart from Russia, there are also some UN Security Council member countries that do not support the idea of a peacekeeping mission for Donbas, he said.

"There is an uncertainty that a UN mission will be able to act more effectively than the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission already deployed in Ukraine. But, still, a great deal will depend on a mandate of such a possible UN mission," Yelchenko said.