Ukraine will raise the issue of reducing the number of Russians in the OSCE SMM in the Donbass

The issue of reducing the number of Russians in the OSCE SMM will be raised during the meeting of the Tripartite Contact Group in Minsk. This was stated by the first vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, the representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup Iryna Herashchenko on Facebook.

"The Ukrainian side, of course, will once again pay attention to the "imprudent" observer (of the OSCE SMM - ed.) Ukraine has repeatedly drawn attention to the employees of the mission, insisting on the reduction of Russians there, and we will firmly stand on the position that Russians in general cannot be in the UN peacekeeping mission", - she wrote.

According to Herashchenko, the behavior of the OSCE SMM observer who "greeted the militants as he would greet his family" was "no mistake, but the position of that observer".

Herashchenko also expressed regret that sometimes even the OSCE coordinators "take strange positions". "For example, the OSCE coordinator in the humanitarian group Tony Frisch refused to visit the Russian citizen Ageev in Starobelsk prison, saying "it would be a political, not humanitarian visit", - she cited.

She thanked the OSCE SMM for the "important, difficult, dangerous work", but she pointed out that the Ukrainian side "will never turn a blind eye to the facts of violations of ethics and the principles of independent observation".

As it was reported earlier, the OSCE SMM is investigating why their observer happily shakes hands with the representatives of terrorists, salutes and embraces a man in civilian clothes among the militants, while the "LNR" militia transfers bodies of the dead Ukrainian soldiers. The published video clearly shows that the mission representative greets the "DNR" militants, and later with the words "Oh, dear" (in Russian) he embraces a man without military identification signs.

"The man, whom the SMM observer was greeting, is a member of the organization engaged in exhumation, the transfer of bodies and the exchange of prisoners/detainees. The observer of the Mission has been cooperating with this person and organization since 2015, so that the detained participants of the hostilities could return home or that the grieving family could at least partially reconcile with the loss of the close ones. It's clear from the video how the observer made a mistake (internal work is being done to prevent it from repeating)", - the OSCE message said.

The tripartite contact group will meet again in Minsk on November 29.