You're reading: Ukrainian Defense Ministry says OSCE exaggerates fighting figures

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry accused international monitors of grossly inflating figures for the number of times the military on April 26 fired on combined Russian-separatist forces near the village of Shyrokyne in Donetsk Oblast.

By doing
so, monitors from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe had
spread “unreliable and incomplete information” on the war in eastern Ukraine,
where a cease-fire has never taken hold and is violated by both sides on an
almost daily basis, according to an
online statement posted on April 29.

The ministry had taken
issue with a
report released on April 27 in which the OSCE stated that Ukrainian forces
had fired on combined Russian-separatist forces a total of 413 times a day
earlier – a claim which the ministry denies.

Irina Gudyma, senior
press assistant to the mission, told the Kyiv Post the group “would stick by
what we have in the report.”

“The information in the
report comes from people who saw this for themselves, who were on the ground
there,” she said.

Spokesman Michael
Bocirukiw reiterated these comments at a briefing in Kyiv on April 30, saying,
“We check the facts included in our reports. That report was prepared by the
special monitoring mission, it wasn’t compiled by our Russian colleagues.”

In rebutting the OSCE
report, the Defense Ministry said that on that day the military had returned
fire eight times in response to 17 attacks on its positions.

“This information is
directly confirmed by information that the
Joint Center for Control and Coordination received from representatives of some districts of
Donetsk Oblast who were monitoring the ceasefire regime at their surveillance
points,” the Defense Ministry said in the statement.

The JCCC consists of
Ukrainian and Russian military personnel, pro-Russian separatists and an OSCE
envoy.

As fighting continues in
areas near Mariupol like Piski and Shyrokyne, information provided by
international monitors has been crucial in documenting the numerous violations
on both sides.

Yet international
monitors have complained repeatedly that their movements are frequently
blocked, with access to certain areas continuously denied by pro-Russian
insurgents.

The international group
has also faced a flurry of accusations that Russian members feed information to
the insurgents, and both Ukrainian soldiers and insurgents alike have expressed
distrust of the group, saying their positions always end up coming under attack
after visits by the monitors.

The accusations have
repeatedly been denied by the group, with Bociurkiw reassuring that all members
are vetted before joining the special monitoring mission.

During recent patrols of
Shyrokyne, the deputy head of the special monitoring mission, Alexander Hug,
told the Kyiv Post that both sides in the conflict were guilty of breaking the
ceasefire, and that the organization had hard evidence of this.

At a briefing in Kyiv on
April 30, Hug reiterated that, saying “both sides have used weapons that were
meant to be removed in accordance with the Minsk agreements.”

Hug also noted that while
fighting had continued in certain areas, some progress had been made in the
war-torn village of Shyrokyne, where nearly 40 residents still remain.

“We asked both sides to
refrain from firing. There was a period of calm for 72 hours, and during that
time people came out of their basements and were able to at least breathe fresh
air,” Hug said.

Since the latest truce
was brokered in Minsk, Belarus on Feb. 12, more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers
have been killed and 500 wounded, parliamentary speaker Volodymyr said on April
30 cited by Interfax news agency.

Kyiv Post staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected].