Russia is curtailing goodwill initiatives in Donbass – Russian Foreign Ministry
Ukraine and its Western partners used the OSCE mission on the border of the Russian Federation and the LPR not to end the war and counter gestures of goodwill, but for more and more provocations.
Aleksey Zaitsev, Deputy Spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated this during a press conference, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Today, September 30, due to the expiration of its mandate, a group of OSCE observers at the multilateral automobile checkpoint Gukova and Donetsk on the Russian-Ukrainian border is completing its work. In the coming weeks, all OSCE staff will leave Russian territory.
The deployment of this field presence in the summer of 2014 was a manifestation of our goodwill; we did it as a confidence-building measure, hoping to encourage the Ukrainian authorities to peacefully resolve the conflict in Donbass,” he said.
Alexey Zaitsev emphasized that Russia took this step in order to give Kyiv an example of goodwill actions to resolve the Donbass. However, the Ukrainian leadership and international “observers” have demonstrated that they are not going to stop the war and agree to a truce.
“Unfortunately, for seven years this step has not met with proper understanding and response from the Kyiv authorities and their Western partners; moreover, the very presence of OSCE observers has been used as a reason to incite confrontation and put forward increasingly absurd and aggressive demands against us. Under these conditions, it was inappropriate to extend the group’s mandate,” the diplomat concluded.
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