"Together with the French partners in the Normandy format, we will soon develop our concept, taking into account the differences between Ukraine and Russia in the vision of the mandate of the peacekeepers," he said in a statement available to UNIAN.
Read alsoGermany's Foreign Office: Unacceptable to engage separatists in talks on peacekeepers in DonbasSchaefer noted that "it is not in the interests of Germany to turn the war in Donbas into a frozen conflict, like Transnistria or Georgia."
"Obviously, many international security issues cannot be solved without the Russian Federation, this applies to North Korea. Therefore, it is a short-sighted approach to immediately reject the Russian proposals," he added.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on September 5 he supported the idea of UN peacekeepers in Donbas but only if they are deployed along the contact line to ensure the safety of OSCE SMM observers. He said he had instructed the Russian Foreign Ministry to introduce a relevant resolution for consideration by the UN Security Council.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that Putin's statement proves Russia's new attempt as a party to the Donbas conflict to present its aggression as a domestic Ukrainian crisis and distort the very idea and purpose of deploying a peacekeeping mission whose original goal is to establish a lasting peace in Donbas and restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
According to earlier reports, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on August 22 he planned to send a motion to the UN General Assembly the coming month, asking for deploying a peacekeeping mission in Donbas. He recalled that during a phone call of the Normandy Four leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on July 24 he pointed out to the need to introduce a UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas with a UN Security Council mandate.
Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko said the UN resolution draft presented by Russia on Donbas had nothing to do with peacekeeping.
"It has nothing to do with a UN peacekeeping mission, it's about a mission to protect the OSCE mission. Well, imagine the situation: there are unarmed OSCE monitors and they are guarded by UN peacekeepers. I do not see any peacekeeping in this, and I cannot imagine how this can be done technically," the Ukrainian diplomat said.
According to him, the draft resolution was presented by Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya; the document was sent to the UN leadership with a request that all members of the UN Security Council could examine it.
