Photo from UNIAN
Disarmament of Russian-backed militants in the occupied Donbas must precede the process of setting up local elections in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin said Wednesday during a joint press conference in Kyiv with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Austrian Federal Minister for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz.
"Of course, we set very important tasks before ourselves, that is the disarmament of all those illegal groups [of militants in Donbas], storage of weapons under reliable control, and the beginning of a transition period to prepare for the elections. Only a mission with an armed component to it can do this, with the effective support of the [OSCE] Special Monitoring Mission," Klimkin said, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
Read alsoStratfor analyzes why Russia about to lose its control of neighbors, incl. UkraineAs UNIAN reported earlier, Klimkin claimed that Russia was blocking the discussion on the deployment of the OSCE armed police mission in Donbas.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at his meeting with Mr Kurz has called for the intensification of consultations on the issue of creating such mission.