Updated 7:46 p.m. Moscow Time
KIEV, October 7 (RIA Novosti) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Tuesday that the delivery of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to the OSCE monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine will be completed on October 13.
According to the contract with Austria's Schiebel, the OSCE is to receive a total of four Camcopter S-100 UAVs along with six pilots and three technicians, who will be stationed on-site in Eastern Ukraine.
"The first [two] UAVs are already in Ukraine, and the final deliveries will be completed on October 13 so that we will have the full technical capability to monitor movements across the border [with Russia]," Poroshenko said at a meeting with border guards outside Kiev.
The Kiev government and independence forces in southeastern Ukraine agreed on a ceasefire at the September 5 meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk. Since the truce was established, the conflicting sides have repeatedly accused each other of violating the regime, although the OSCE said earlier this month that the truce was generally holding.
Poroshenko said on September 13 he had officially authorized the OSCE mission to deploy drones to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire in Ukraine.
The deployment of OSCE drones, initially planned for late September or early October, has already been put off several times.
Russia's OSCE envoy Andrei Kelin said last month that training was underway for UAV maintenance personnel and that the first aerial vehicles were to be tested soon, while the security organization's press office reported the first two drones would be launched at the end of October.
This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin and OSCE chief Didier Burkhalter agreed in a phone conversation on Monday that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine needed to be beefed up.
