When a cease-fire deal was signed by Ukraine, Russia and Kremlin-backed separatists on Sept. 5, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was expected to monitor the agreement’s implementation.
But, a month later, the agreement appears to be a farce, since few of its clauses have been enforced, and because the OSCE has neither resources nor sufficient staff to monitor its implementation.
In that limbo situation, sometimes dubbed as “neither war nor peace,” heavy fighting is going on despite the formal cease-fire, and Russian weapons and mercenaries are capable of crossing the border into Ukraine without being noticed by anyone.
One apparent reason for the OSCE’s insufficient ability to control the situation is its refusal to deploy observers without armored vehicles, as opposed to the usual bullet-proof gear worn by journalists and volunteers.
Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the organization’s mission to Ukraine, argued that armored vehicles were necessary to save the lives of OSCE staff.
“We will deploy as rapidly as we can,” Bociurkiw said by phone. “However, in order to deploy to the east, we do require a sufficient number of armored vehicles. We can only deploy as many monitors as we have armored vehicles.”
Bociurkiw also said such vehicles took a while to make because their specifications were quite high, and there was a lack of them because of conflicts elsewhere. One vehicle can take four observers, he said.
Currently, the OSCE has 90 observers in eastern Ukraine and is planning to double that number, Bociurkiw said. Of these, 20 observers are in Donetsk, and another 20 are in Luhansk, he added.
The total number of OSCE observers in Ukraine is 270 and is expected to be increased to 500, Bociurkiw said. Canada has agreed to fund 21 new monitors that should be arriving soon, Bociurkiw added.
“We are appealing to member states to increase their contributions to the mission,” he said, agreeing that the number of observers was insufficient.
But this is far short of the numbers that President Petro Poroshenko thinks is required. Poroshenko said on Oct. 7 that he wanted the number of OSCE monitors in Ukraine to be increased to 1,500.
Apart from the mission in Ukraine, the OSCE also has monitors at two checkpoints on the Russian side of the Russian-Ukrainian border – Gukovo and Donetsk, not to be confused with the Ukrainian city of Donetsk – but none at any of the other checkpoints adjacent to the separatist-controlled areas.
Nor does the OSCE have any permanent observers on separatist-controlled checkpoints on the Ukrainian side of the border, though Bociurkiw said sometimes OSCE patrols went near the border.
Torsten Derrik, an OSCE observer at the Russian-Ukrainian border, said by phone that the OSCE had initially agreed to deploy monitors to the parts of the border adjacent to Gukovo and Donetsk because they were the only ones not under control of the Ukrainian border guard. But, since then, the situation has drastically changed, with separatists and Russian troops extending their control to large swathes of the border.
Currently Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE are negotiating on possibly deploying monitors to other checkpoints and increasing the total number of observers on the border, Derrik said.
He said that, at the Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints, OSCE observers had not seen any movement of Russian weapons, mercenaries or regular troops into Ukraine. But the OSCE has been unable to monitor the situation at any other checkpoints where such movements could have taken place.
Nor has the OSCE observed any Russian troops, mercenaries or weapons being withdrawn from Ukraine at the Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints – a condition stipulated by the ceasefire agreement, Derrik said.
The OSCE has also been criticized for the presumably slow deployment of drones – an efficient tool for monitoring movements across the border. Last month President Petro Poroshenko said during talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he was concerned with the slow pace of the process.
Bociurkiw said that four drones had been ordered, two had already arrived, and several more would be ordered.
The ones that arrived will be in the theater of operation by the end of next week, he said.
Poroshenko said on Oct. 7 that the transfer of drones to the OSCE mission would be completed on Oct. 13.
“We will have all technical capabilities to control movements across the border,” he said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
