You're reading: Separatist leader threatens to shoot OSCE observers if police mission sent to Donetsk

The authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) see the possible arrival of an armed OSCE mission in the republic as an act of intervention.

“If they wish to come here armed, I will see that as an intervention and will shoot all the armed OSCE [employees] so that they do not even dream of coming here with a handgun,” head of self-proclaimed DPR Alexander Zakharchenko told the press on Monday.

“The monitoring mission received the monitoring mandate because not a single OSCE [employee] is armed here,” he said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Friday that he was expecting the soonest decision to create and to deploy an armed OSCE police mission in Donbas.