The deployment of weapons, even if they are not loaded, to an airfield of the city of Luhansk controlled by the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) is a violation of the Minsk Agreements, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) said.
“The mission has observed and reported a concentration of weapons at an aerodrome in the south-eastern outskirts of “LPR”-controlled Luhansk city. Regardless of whether or not these weapons are loaded, their presence in their current location is a violation of the Minsk Agreements,” the OSCE SMM said on Facebook on Friday in a reply to an LPR representative’s statement regarding the OSCE SMM’s role in weapons verification.
This way, the role of the mission’s observers was incorrectly represented in the LPR representative’s statement, the OSCE SMM said.
“These inaccurate statements, combined with the continued impediments to our monitors’ freedom of movement and an unwillingness to comply with the Minsk Agreements, undermine efforts towards achieving normalization and stabilization in Ukraine,” the OSCE SMM said.
On April 20, the OSCE SMM said that the mission recorded the presence of the proscribed weapons in a security zone last week. Since April 5, the OSCE SMM recorded the deployment of weapons in an airfield in the south-eastern outskirts of the LPR-controlled Luhansk, including seven multiple launch rocket systems, 17 howitzers and seven tanks, the mission said in a report.
Andrei Marochko, the LPR Defense Ministry spokesperson, in turn, said that the OSCE SMM representatives inspect the LPR People’s Militants’ equipment, which will participate in the Victory Day parade in Luhansk, daily and record that weapons are not loaded.
He said this, commenting on a statement of spokesperson of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ General Staff Vladyslav Voloshin that the Victory Day parade in Luhansk is a reason to breach the agreements on the withdrawal of heavy weapons over 100 mm in caliber and that artillery, which will take part in it,” easily reaches the Ukrainian positions.”
“I will say only one thing, the OSCE SMM representatives visit the location, where our hardware is deployed, every day. They record the presence of it every day, as well as the fact that those weapons aren’t loaded,” Marochko said.
