MOSCOW, July 26 (RIA Novosti) – The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) plans to provide drones for its monitoring mission in the war zone in the southeast of Ukraine and at the border with Russia, according to German news portal n-tv.de.
Swiss Foreign Minister and OSCE chairman Didier Burkhalter previously agreed on this initiative with colleagues from Russia and Ukraine.
According to the agency, the drones must have the technical ability to reach the altitude of 4,000 meters (approx. 13,100 ft.), which will help to determine the moving objects at a distance of several kilometers.
International inspectors have not recorded increasing military presence of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, though Kiev previously accused Moscow of doing that. Eight international inspection teams have checked the deployment of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine. Representatives of the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland held talks with the command officers of the Russian military units, took photos of troops’ and vehicles’ locations, and watched the route of their movements.
Earlier this month, Moscow invited OSCE observers to assess the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, which has been hit multiple times by Ukrainian artillery.
On July 13, shells exploded in the Russian city of Donetsk in Rostov region, killing one civilian and injuring two.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov stressed that Ukraine “cynically denies obvious facts and is doing everything to reject accusations of the shelling of Russian territory."
Moscow condemned the attacks, saying that such provocations might have irreversible consequences.
