RIA Novosti: Moscow Ready for International Monitoring on Border With Ukraine

MOSCOW, July 10 (RIA Novosti) – Russia agrees to international monitoring of its border with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, said Thursday.

“The Russian side is ready for monitoring on the Russian-Ukrainian border, ready to accept Ukrainian border guards in Russia’s Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints on the border between the two states. But, naturally, it is possible only when a sustainable truce and ceasefire is reached in southeastern Ukraine,” he said.

“At the moment we are talking about the establishment of an OSCE monitoring system along the border between Russia and Ukraine. We presume that observers must be accompanied by the militia at the checkpoints, which are controlled by the self-defense,” Lukashevich said

On June 29, in a four-party phone conversation Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the possibility of sending OSCE inspectors to checkpoints on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

Moscow has said the OSCE mission needs to continue its work in eastern Ukraine to keep a record of what is actually happening in the troubled regions.

The OSCE has been monitoring the situation in violence-struck Donetsk and Luhansk for several months already, although their number was recently reduced due to the “highly volatile situation” and multiple detentions of its monitors.