The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry commented on the report of the Special OSCE monitoring mission (SMM) dated Feb. 16 “Hardship for conflict-affected civilians in eastern Ukraine” during May-September, 2016, the Ministry’s press-service said.
The Foreign Ministry noted that the report “has once again confirmed the gross violations of the Minsk agreements and human rights by Russia and illegal armed formations supported by it in the temporarily occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
The report notes that the results of the shelling by the Russian-backed separatists damaged and destroyed many private houses and objects of life-critical infrastructure.
“Russian hybrid troops continued placing arms and military equipment in civilian areas, which was accompanied by the seizure of administrative buildings. They used roofs of houses to accommodate their firing positions,” a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website says.
In addition, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry noted that the OSCE SMM missed the “critical issues of humanitarian “agenda”, in particular, murders, disappearance and illegal detention of local residents in the separatist-held territories of Donbas, the impunity of the Russian military and the separatists, the seizure of property, obstruction to the activities of international humanitarian organizations.
“The presence of significant amount of actually closed areas for the OSCE observers in the occupied part of Donbas, did not allow the SMM impart the document a truly integrated and comprehensive character,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The ministry in its message rests responsibility for the suffering of the local population in the separatist-held territories upon the Russian Federation, which is keeping supply weapons to Donbas.
“We call on Russia to proceed to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk agreements without delay, primarily, to stop the attacks, ensure full and unimpeded access to the SMM, including to the section of the Ukrainian-Russian state border temporarily uncontrolled by the government of Ukraine, release all the hostages and illegally detained persons, withdraw its troops, weapons and military equipment from the territory of Ukraine,” the Foreign Ministry said.
