KIEV (Sputnik) — Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Lamberto Zannier announced on Friday his intention to extend the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine.
Zannier is among the visitors to the 12th annual Yalta European Strategy meeting currently underway in Ukraine.
"One of the purposes of my visit is to explore what features need to be improved to ensure a better work of the mission. We will also continue discussion with [Ertugrul] Apakan [Chief Monitor of the OSCE SMM] tonight because we are planning to enlarge the mission. We will contact our member states to send more candidates for the mission," Zannier was quoted by the Ukraine 112 TV channel as saying.
Ukraine's southeast has been engulfed in a conflict since April, 2014, when Kiev launched a military operation to suppress local militia in the Donbass region.
On Thursday, Russia's envoy to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said that Moscow calls on the organization to intensify the SMM, underscoring that the monitoring must be carried out equally on both sides of the contact line.
Shortly before Moscow made its proposal, the SMM said it had registered movement of military equipment in the eastern Ukrainian areas controlled by Kiev.
The OSCE mission was deployed in eastern Ukraine in 2014 to monitor the region, which until recently has remained tense, as both Kiev and the local militias accused each other of violating the February Minsk ceasefire deal.
