OSCE General Secretary Thomas Greminger has supported the idea of sending a United Nations peacekeeping mission to eastern Ukraine. He believes its mission is to fulfill the Minsk agreements.

Greminger elaborated his view in an exclusive interview with the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Noting that the implementation of the Minsk agreements is now "stagnant," Greminger said: If the peacekeeping operation helps to overcome the impasse and implement the Minsk agreements, I will be in favor. The OSCE was an organization that responded very positively to this idea.

Greminger said it was the OSCE that came up with the idea of joint UN-OSCE mission in eastern Ukraine.

However, now we see that there is no common understanding of what such an operation will be in terms of size, scope and mandate. I would like to emphasize one thing: such an operation will have to perform what we achieved - the Minsk agreements. The peacekeeping operation will not be directed to anything other than this. I am afraid that as long as there is no appetite for the realization of Minsk, we will also not be able to come to a common understanding of what such an operation may be like, he said.

Greminger said, everything is in favor of the OSCE and we would be happy to contribute. But we are far from a common understanding. If you create a common understanding, it will be doable.

The Minsk Agreements are a set of documents aimed at resolving the situation in the east of Ukraine: the Minsk Protocol, signed in Minsk on September 5, 2014, which provides for a cease-fire in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the second Minsk Agreement, agreed at the Summit in Minsk on February 11-14, 2015 by leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France - the so-called "Normandy Four" and signed by the Contact Group by representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the OSCE and the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics ('LPR'/'DPR').

The last meeting of the Normandy Four at the level of heads of state and government was held in Berlin on October 19, 2016.