OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Austrian Foreign Affairs Minister Sebastian Kurz is convinced that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) will continue to perform its functions under the current mandate, will expand areas of its control over the entire territory of Donbas and will primarily control the ceasefire observance.

At a briefing in Mariupol on Wednesday morning, he also said one needs to be realistic about the mission's powers. Answering a question of Ukrainian journalists about the possibility of the OSCE police mission deployment in Ukraine, he stressed the OSCE has 57 member states and all the decisions are taken by consensus.

He stressed the OSCE will do everything so that the mission should operate as efficiently as possible, hold surveillance over the entire territory of Donbas so that the mission's effort should help achieve a complete ceasefire.

However, the efforts of the OSCE mission alone are not enough, the chairman of the organization said. The efforts of decision makers in Moscow, Kyiv and other countries are needed, Kurz said.

The minister also noted the importance of restoring the destroyed infrastructure in Donbas, but stressed the priority of ensuring the ceasefire on both sides.

He said the dialogue and negotiations need to be continued. At present, the Minsk agreements are the only foundation, a document based on which they must act, Kurz said. He said that even though he is not satisfied with the progress of the implementation of these agreements, the situation at the time of their signing was worse than it is now, and it could be even worse.

Answering a question about the prospects of the Minsk agreements implementation, the OSCE chairman-in-office said he is not satisfied with the current 'status quo', but in the absence of another base document, they will carry out the Minsk accords.