The number of members from Russia and the countries friendly to it has largely increased in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) last year, Verkhovna Rada First Deputy Speaker, Ukrainian envoy to the Trilateral Contact Group humanitarian subgroup Iryna Gerashchenko said.

"There are very frequently representatives from those countries, which have special sentiments toward Moscow, in the mission, and sometimes they do not notice obvious shell attacks. Last year, by the way, the number of Russians has doubled, the number of Serbs, Belarusians has increased several times in the OSCE SMM. We want to say that it is very important that everybody who is working in the OSCE SMM should be unbiased and should treat in an impartial manner the performance of his duties," Gerashchenko said in an interview with the TSN. Tyzhden TV program.

Ukraine "is very grateful to the OSCE SMM," she said. "Their mission of independent monitors, they are civilian unarmed people, who are in particular working in severe conditions of occupied territory. They are daily at risk of falling victims to aggression, misunderstanding or even victims to an attack," the deputy speaker said.

"On the other hand, if we do not honestly talk about imperfection of this monitoring procedure, which is seen very frequently, it will be wrong with respect to our country," the politician said.

Other countries, which even "have some sentiments toward Russia," are not aggressors toward Ukraine, "therefore, on our part, we really have no grounds to suspect representatives of these friendly countries of something incorrect," Gerashchenko also said.