KIEV, May 29 (RIA Novosti) – The members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring group detained in Ukraine’s Donetsk region earlier this week are safe and sound, acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia said at a briefing in Kiev on Thursday.
"We have information that these four staff members of the OSCE mission are safe and sound," he said, adding he had no specific information on the conditions of the group members.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is currently in talks "about how to free them in the nearest future" and hopes "it will happen in the next few days," he said.
Slaviansk people’s mayor Vyacheslav Ponomaryov earlier told RIA Novosti that the OSCE observers were detained by federalists, who found the group's equipment suspicious, adding that "they are all right." The monitors are held in the town of Makiivka in Donetsk region, he said.
The OSCE said Tuesday it had lost contact the previous night with one of its monitoring teams on a routine patrol in Donetsk Region, which proclaimed independence from Ukraine earlier this month.
On Wednesday, United Nations political chief Jeffrey Feltman said that eleven more OSCE election monitors had been detained in the region. She reiterated Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's call on Kiev authorities to steer the country away from instability.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said that Moscow would assist in efforts to release the detained group, which included a Russian citizen.
Later in the day, the OSCE announced that it had reestablished contact with the 11-person group as they returned to Donetsk.
In April, pro-federalization activists in Slaviansk captured a team of OSCE military observers. They were freed a week later with the assistance of Russian presidential representative Vladmir Lukin.
Earlier on Thursday, the Ukrainian parliament ratified a Memorandum of Understanding with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on the deployment of the OSCE’s special monitoring mission in the country.
