Russia Says OSCE Observers at Ukraine Border 'in Next Few Days'

W460

Russia said Monday that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) would be deployed at its border checkpoints with rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine in the next few days.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that OSCE monitors would see that Russia is not sending arms and fighters to help the rebels.

"We expect the OSCE observers to deploy at the Donetsk and Gukovo checkpoints in the next few days," Lavrov said at a briefing in Moscow.

He said that the OSCE could use drones and any other technical means to carry out "objective" observation.

"We were asked whether observers could use drones. They're welcome, as part of the mandate the mission has, they can use any technical means of observation and objective control," Lavrov said.

"I hope this will allow us to dispel the suspicions periodically voiced to us that those checkpoints controlled on the Ukrainian side by rebels are used to send weapons and armed people on a mass scale from Russia to Ukraine," Lavrov said.

He said he had asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to "tell his staff members in the OSCE not to hinder carrying out this agreement."

The Russian diplomat accused the West of deliberately stalling the observers' mission after President Vladimir Putin issued the invitation on July 11.

"Two weeks passed, basically in discussions with the OSCE that weren't needed by anyone, when U.S. and British diplomats together with Ukrainian ones tried to stop them accepting this invitation from Russia," Lavrov said.

"We presented various programs for observers to be present at border points, and the fact that this very simple thing was decided after so long can only be explained by one thing: that the West tried to stall this process, I don't know why," he added.

The first of the OSCE observers were expected to arrive in Russia on Tuesday from Ukraine to begin monitoring the border, a spokesman for Russia's southern Rostov region, Alexander Titov, told RIA-Novosti news agency.

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