Interfax: Donetsk separatists urge UN to send peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine

(Interfax – Moscow, November 25, 2014) The leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR] has suggested that a mixed Russian-European peacekeeping contingent should be sent to eastern Ukraine.

“We urge the United Nations to send a mixed peacekeeping contingent including Russian and European peacekeepers,” the deputy speaker of the supreme council of the DPR, Denys Pushylin [Denis Pushilin], told Interfax on Tuesday [25 November].

He said that OSCE representatives could also be included in the peacekeeping contingent if they manage to obtain a control mandate in addition to an observation one.

“It is very important that the peacekeepers should not only record violations of human rights – although this is very important. They should also possess the function of controlling observance of the truce. They can be located on the demarcation line between the sides, as well as in the areas of the fiercest clashes, in those places where civilians are dying,” he said.

On Tuesday, the website of the press centre of the DPR supreme council and government posted a statement by the leadership of the self-proclaimed republic dealing with the humanitarian situation in the region. The authors of the statement emphasized the need for a peacekeeping contingent to intervene in settling the conflict in Donbass.

“We demand that an emergency session of the UN Security Council be called and that it consider the issue of intervention by a peacekeeping contingent including representatives of the Russian Federation to control the implementation of the existing agreements and to resolve the humanitarian and social situation,” it says in the statement.