You're reading: As situation in Donbas deteriorates, OSCE to enhance mission in Ukraine

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will expand its monitoring mission in the Donbas war zone, the OSCE’s chief monitor confirmed on Jan. 24.

Ertugrul Apakan voiced the organization’s plans while visiting Ukraine for talks with Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak.

“We plan to expand geography of our mission, increase the number of mission staff in the conflict area, and we will diversify activities,” Apakan said.

The expansion of the OSCE mission comes as its monitors say they are recording a notable increase in the use of weapons proscribed by the Minsk ceasefire agreements, including multiple launch rocket systems and heavy artillery, in the war zone.

The organization, in recent statements, has also said that both parties to the conflict in Donbas are to blame for the increasing violence, which is causing more and more hardship for civilians in the frontline zone. According to the latest OSCE field reports, despite progress being made towards separating the opposing troops and achieving a halt to fighting, local civilian infrastructure and homes are still being damaged or destroyed during sporadic clashes, and innocent lives are still being threatened.

After the almost two years since the signing of the Minsk agreements, the implementation of the ceasefire is still being torpedoed, Apakan said in a statement published on the OSCE website on Jan. 19. He added that there was still a risk of a further escalation of the fighting in the Donbas.

Intense fighting

In January, OSCE Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug resumed his regular inspections of the situation all along the separation line, from Luhansk to Mariupol. According to him, the most violent clashes between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed armed groups are now taking place within a triangular area between the towns of Avdiivka, Yasynuvata, and Pisky, north of Donetsk, and also at the so-called Svitlodarsk bulge near the town of Debaltseve.

Debaltseve was captured by Russian-backed forces and troops from the Russian regular army two years ago, days after a ceasefire between the two sides was supposed to have gone into effect.

The further escalation of hostilities in Donetsk’s suburbs, a heavily industrialized area, also brings a threat of ecological disaster to the whole region, Hug said. For instance, in January, the OSCE recorded serious armed clashes near the town of Novhorodske, where there are chemical waste stores some 400 meters from the front line on the Ukrainian side.

Considering the high intensity of artillery exchanges in the area, the destruction of the toxic waste storages is highly probable, which could contaminate a wide area with toxic gas, Hug said.

Intense clashes have also been recorded around the Donetsk water filtration plant in the war-torn industrial zone between Avdiivka and Yasynuvata, Hug said. That could endanger water supplies to heavily populated areas north of Donetsk, where the humanitarian situation is already poor, he said.

A new concept

Considering the situation, OSCE officials now say they are ready to strengthen their monitoring mission in the Donbas. Plans to beef up the mission were initially voiced in early January by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, who took over as chairman-in-office of the OSCE at the beginning of 2017.

Kurz had earlier thrown Ukraine a curveball by saying he might take an alternative approach towards sanctions against Russia over its invasion in the Donbas. Europe must give up the Cold War style of thinking about Russia, and encourage it to pull its troops out of Ukraine through gradually lifting the sanctions, rather than imposing new penalties, Kurz told German newspaper Spiegel Online on Dec. 30.

“After each new positive advance we must relax the sanctions,” Kurz said.

But after his first visit to the Donbas frontline zone together with his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin on Jan. 3-4, the OSCE chairman-in-office hardened his rhetoric on Russia and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine. On Jan. 18, Kurz announced a decision to boost the OSCE mission in Donbas by increasing number of monitoring officials to 700, widening their inspection zone to the whole territory of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, and also providing more equipment, such as video monitoring cameras, to officials.

As the most intense fighting usually happens after dusk, OSCE observers are to monitor the situation in the Donbas 24/7, Kurz said during a press conference in Moscow on Jan. 18. He also said that as no substantial movement towards implementing Minsk had been seen in the Donbas so far, EU sanctions on Russia would not be lifted.

‘Be realistic’

Despite the lack of progress on Minsk, Ukraine still hopes to see the OSCE deploy an armed peacekeeping mission on the separation line, and along the part of Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia that the government does not control. Both President Petro Poroshenko and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak have stressed Ukraine’s hopes during their meetings with top OSCE officials.

But while the OSCE says it is ready to boost its mission in Donbas, Russia continues to oppose any deployment of an international armed contingent to provide security and law enforcement in the conflict zone.

“We are ready to increase the number of monitors on the separation line and inside the (weapons) storage sites, making the observation constant, and also to allow observers to carry personal defensive weapons,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Jan. 18.

However, he said Russia completely opposed the provision of any police functions to the OSCE mission. Instead, Russia insists that all law enforcement functions within the unrecognized separatist republics must be handed to Russian-backed armed groups.

And the OSCE itself is skeptical that the kind of peacekeeping mission in the Donbas envisioned by Ukraine could even be agreed, far less implemented.

“There are as many as 57 OSCE member states, and any decision need consensus approval,” Kurz said at the press conference in Moscow on Jan. 18.

“As of now, this idea has not enough support. So we must all be realistic about a police mission in the Donbas.”