All OSCE monitors in Donetsk region released - people's mayor of Slavyansk
1 June 2014, 10:42 -- The self-defense force in Donetsk region claims to have freed all detained OSCE monitors. 'At the present moment we don't have OSCE monitors. All those detained last week have been released,' people's mayor of Slavyansk Vyacheslav Ponomaryov told Interfax on Sunday.
On Thursday Ponomaryov told Interfax that a group of four OSCE monitors that was reported missing two days earlier to the south of Donetsk had been detained by his people. He said the monitors were not arrested but only detained and could be released any time. He assumed that the monitors could have engaged in intelligence gathering.
Previously OSCE reported it had lost contact with one of its monitoring teams operating in Donetsk region. The mission said that the team consisted of four people - citizens of Estonia, Switzerland, Turkey and Denmark. On Wednesday the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported that four members of the OSCE monitoring mission had been seized by self-defense activists in Donetsk region.
Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin at a UN Security Council session said that the main responsibility for the security of OSCE monitors is borne by the host country.
The Lugansk region's militiamen have released four Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe employees and have pledged not to obstruct their further work, the leader of the 'People's Front' of the Lugansk region, Alexey Chmylenko, told Interfax.
OSCE special representative on Ukraine leaving office - media
'Indeed, a group of four OSCE representatives was detained yesterday. Afterwards, they were taken to Lugansk, where their documents were examined. When it was confirmed that they are actually representatives of this international organization and are not involved in organizing any provocations, a decision was made to warn them against traveling unaccompanied and without appropriate documents any further,' he said.
Militiamen have already let the OSCE group go and are not obstructing their work in any way, Chmylenko said.
'On the contrary, our militiamen have even shown to them what they wanted to see. We are accompanying them everywhere and helping them,' he added.
Four OSCE officers held by militia near Donetsk, feel 'fine' - Slavyansk people's mayor
The people's mayor of Slavyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, claims that four Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe officers, who went missing two days ago, are being held by local militiamen.
'The group that went missing to the south of Donetsk includes four people. We know their location. Everything is fine with them. We asked them not to go anywhere for a while. But these four persons turned out to be too zealous. They were certainly detained,' Ponomaryov told Interfax on Thursday.
OSCE denies plans to withdraw monitors from eastern Ukraine
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe currently has no plans to withdraw its monitors from eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian mission's spokesman, Michael Bociurkiw, told RIA Novosti Wednesday.
'At the moment we have no plans to move our people out of the eastern regions of Ukraine. We are looking at reconfiguring the team, but that is a normal thing,' he said.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for National Dialogue Roundtables in Ukraine, earlier said that the organization may withdraw its monitors if their security is under threat.
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