VIENNA, August 14 (RIA Novosti) - OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine has once again reported about Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s volunteer battalion abducting villagers in the Luhansk region, SMM’s most recent report states.
“The SMM learnt about cases of detention of two villagers in the Luhansk region. The head of Starobilsk police told the SMM that investigations had confirmed that soldiers from the 24th Battalion, a volunteer battalion under the control of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, was responsible for the abduction of the villagers, as well as their detention,” the report published on the OSCE website says.
“In a meeting with the Ukrainian military commander of the security operation, the SMM was told that the military general staff had been visiting the area in order to assess further involvement of the 24th Battalion. The findings had not been revealed so far.”
SMM added that their interlocutor said that “in his view, the 24th Battalion ought to be disbanded, reformed and redeployed.”
The report is the second in a row, drawing the international attention to volunteer military battalion’s illegal detentions. On Wednesday, SMM to Ukraine referred to the regional chief of police, who told the SMM “that the detention of supporters of the so-called ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’ (‘LPR’), carried out by a volunteer Ukrainian battalion at the filtration checkpoint in Schyatya (24 km north of Luhansk city), was illegal.”
In mid-April, Kiev authorities started a special military operation in the east to suppress the pro-independence movement. Moscow has repeatedly called on Kiev to stop the bloodshed and seek a peaceful resolution through nationwide dialogue.
