MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The deployment of the UN peacekeepers in Donbass is possible only after Ukraine makes fundamentally important amendments to the law on the special status of the region, Russia’s envoy to the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine Boris Gryzlov said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said that Russia has sent the UN Security Council president a draft resolution on the UN mission in Ukraine, adding that Moscow intends to call consultations at the expert level and at the level of the UN ambassadors.
"The deployment of the UN contingent on the contact line in the Donbass will become possible only after Ukraine introduces the fundamentally important amendments to the law on the special status of the Donbass. These amendments should be agreed upon in the contact group. They will concern the introduction of a special status on a permanent basis under the Steinmeier formula," Gryzlov said.
The "Steinmeier formula," a mechanism proposed by former German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, envisions holding local elections under the oversight of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which must confirm whether they met international standards. Upon the confirmation, the legislation establishing the Donbass special status (de facto autonomy) would take effect.
Russia is ready to support the initiative for establishing UN peacekeeping mission for protection of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) in Donbass, if there are any issues with ensuring the security of the observers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday.
"If there is a problem in providing security of these observers, we are ready, as Russian President [Vladimir Putin] said [at the BRICS summit] in Xiamen, to support the repeatedly proposed idea of creating the UN peacekeeping mission for protection of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission," Lavrov told journalists on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok.
The minister added that since all the agreements reached during the Minsk talks and following summits of the Normandy Four format in Paris and Berlin in 2015 and 2016 had declared pullback of forces at line of contact as a top priority, Russia suggested to make a decision in the UN Security Council that as soon as such pullback took place and the OSCE observers entered the zone, the UN forces would be deployed there as well for their protection.
"Certainly, particular parameters of such UN forces for protection, including national contingents — which countries would be represented in this protection mission — should be agreed by the conflict parties, which stipulates involvement of DPR and LPR [Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic] in this process," Lavrov said.
