Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's comment on the illegal activities of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine
18 November 2022 12:48
2382-18-11-2022
The OSCE Permanent Council established a Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine in March 2014 to ease tensions and support peace, stability and security, as well as to monitor and help uphold all OSCE principles and commitments. These were logical goals after the February 2014 coup in Ukraine. The domestic political conflict had already flared up by that time and soon turned into the punitive military operation Kiev waged against Donbass civilians.
In general, the SMM was the most acceptable international presence in Ukraine of all the options available at that time. The presence of SMM observers at the contact line was designed to lower the intensity of the fighting. The leadership of the mission facilitated local truce agreements and restoration work. Despite its unconcealed bias, the SMM could not ignore the vast number of ceasefire violations by Ukrainian armed units and shelling of civilian infrastructure and social facilities and residential areas from their positions, which led to numerous civilian losses.
While giving credit to many rank-and-file employees of the SMM, including Russian citizens, we have to state that the leadership of this OSCE field presence primarily served the interests of Kiev's Western backers. The mission's pro-Western personnel policy prevented Russian citizens from holding important posts in its headquarters and regional structures.
In its public reports, the SMM presented a largely distorted picture of what was happening. It concealed war crimes committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and discredited the defenders of Donetsk and Lugansk. The mission's top officials ignored inconvenient facts from reports of ordinary observers and cleaned up on-site reports. Incidentally, the OSCE stubbornly refused to give Russia access to initial reports despite numerous requests. When it was impossible to conceal violations, the mission's leadership used deliberately vague wording that made it impossible to identify the culprits. The mission would not provide a running record of civilian losses and infrastructure damage in Donbass. These statistics were published only after Russia's insistent demands but for a limited period (from September 2016 to September 2020). In most cases, the guilty side was not identified. In the 2014-2016 period, when the number of victims of the Kiev regime's military operation reached its peak (there were thousands of them), the mission claimed that it did not record this information and did not publish it in a systematised form for that reason. In violation of their mandate, the SMM's top officials refused to establish contacts with the local authorities in the DPR and the LPR. They did not monitor the human rights situation on Kiev-controlled territories despite numerous glaring violations of the rights of the Russian speakers and freedom of the press, and evidence of aggressive nationalism, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism. During its entire work, the SMM failed to prepare a report on the evidence of aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism in Ukraine, neglecting insistent Russia's requests that one be released. In the meantime, the mission described neo-Nazi marches in its reports as "peaceful gatherings with patriotic slogans and banners."
The activities of the SMM were often not only biased but also illegal. Documented cases of its systematic cooperation with foreign secret services began to be revealed with the liberation of territories in Donbass. Some Western observers even recruited local residents as agents. Several former SMM employees were detained after an investigation was conducted by the DPR and the LPR authorities.
It was established that some observers gave information from their security cameras to the Ukrainian military for targeting purposes and tracking the movements of equipment and the positions of local LPR and DPR forces. The mission covered up evidence of fortification works by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and collected sensitive information for Western intelligence services. The patrolling by observers and monitoring by drones were disproportionately focused on the areas controlled by the LPR and the DPR. The bias in the SMM's senior ranks is also confirmed by the fact that they gave the Kiev regime some of the mission's equipment, primarily armoured vehicles. We will continue informing you about new instances of the former mission's illegal activities.
These shortcomings in the work of the SMM, whose mandate expired on April 1, 2022, require a comprehensive analysis. The double standards and general bias in its work that made them possible require honest, open discussion and must be rectified.
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