17:55 03.11.2016

OSCE SMM calls on conflicting parties in Donbas to observe Minsk Agreements

2 min read
OSCE SMM calls on conflicting parties in Donbas to observe Minsk Agreements

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug has urged the parties to the conflict in Donbas to adhere to their assumed obligations.

If the sides had stuck to their commitments under the Minsk Agreements, there would have been no civilian casualties, he told a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

Since the start of September, the mission's monitors have been recording the constant rise in ceasefire breaches, Hug said.

Now the level of violence surpasses the levels which had been recorded directly before the sides resumed their obligations to observe the ceasefire regime, he said. It looks like that the parties are fully determined to repeat the errors of the past, he said.

The breaches are being spotted on both sides of the dividing line, the OSCE SMM principal deputy chief monitor said. In particular, the mission's monitors confirmed the deaths of two civilians in Makiyivka controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), as well as the injuries of seven people.

On the basis of surveillance conducted by the OSCE SMM monitors on the spot, it becomes clear that the applied weapons could not be used at other places, except on the forbidden frontiers seeing breaches of the pullback line, Hug said.

He said that the SMM monitors have recorded in Popasna controlled by the Ukrainian authorities the houses of civilians burnt down in fire attacks that, in his words, showed that both sides are breaching the ceasefire.

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