You're reading: OSCE restricts patrolling in war zone after monitor killed

Due to growing danger to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s observers in the Donbas war zone, restrictions have been put on patrols close to the frontline, the organization’s deputy chief monitor Alexander Hug told during a press conference in Kyiv on April 28.

“At the moment, we only patrol on solid ground, which means asphalted or concrete roads. This will, of course, restrict our abilities to visit certain locations, villages, areas close to the contact line. Some weapons storage facilities and other areas will not be accessible for us for the time being,” Hug told.

The decision involving the Special Monitoring Mission comes after the death of OSCE paramedic Joseph Stone on April 23, when one of the OSCE armored cars struck a landmine on the road near the Russian-occupied village of Pryshyb in Luhansk Oblast some 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. Stone was killed in the explosion and resulting fire, two other monitors, German and Czech nationals, were wounded.

The explosion was powerful enough to throw the 4.5 tons armored vehicle seven meters away from the impact point. Stone’s remains are still in Ukraine, and legal preparations are being made to repatriate his body to the United States, Hug told the Kyiv Post.

What happened on April 23 was not an accident, but the use of an indiscriminate weapon intentionally placed in that location to injure or kill someone, Hug stressed, adding that the ill-fated patrol had used the same road less than two hours before being blown up in the explosion.

Earlier, a senior representative to Russian-backed militants Eduard Basurin claimed the OSCE was to blame for the incident in Luhansk Oblast, as its patrols “had deviated from the main road to secondary route in violation of their mandate” and should not have been there.

Without referring to the militant speaker, Hug named those assertions “distressful,”
stressing that OSCE mandate has no limitations on movement and full access in the area and that all landmines must be cleared off near frontline areas, or at least mapped, marked and fenced.

Since the beginning of 2016, as many as 45 civilians have been killed and more 96 were injured by landmines or improvised explosive devices in the near-frontline zones of eastern Ukraine, Hug said during the briefing.

Meanwhile, the OSCE teams are continuing to perform the internal criminal assessment of the deadly incident, investigating the impact location in the non-Ukrainian government-controlled zone in Luhansk Oblast.