"At the first stage, in the period before the [Donbass] elections, we should have the [Russian-Ukrainian] border controlled by the armed OSCE mission. On the second day after the elections we should make sure that the Ukrainian military controls the border," Poroshenko told the Ukrainian television broadcasters, in an interview released on Sunday.
The Ukrainian president added that these demands were part of the Minsk deal, signed by the Ukraine’s conflicting sides, the government and pro-independence militia, in 2015. General elections in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region, one of the provisions of the Minsk accords, have been repeatedly pushed back.
On October 20, following a Normandy Four meeting, Poroshenko said that Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine agreed on the deployment of the armed OSCE mission, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russia would not oppose such deployment.
