LUHANSK – The deputy head of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE SMM), Alexander Hug, and a team of monitors have visited a pedestrian checkpoint between the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and an area controlled by Kyiv, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported on Jan. 16.
The SMM on Saturday patrolled a bridge in Stanytsia Luhanska, to which it has paid particular attention since 2014; the place has been patrolled since the beginning of the conflict, since 2014, both by Luhansk and by the opposite side, Hug told reporters.
Like civilians, the OSCE SMM, being a civilian mission, crosses this place, too, he said. The SMM monitored the situation also when the bridge was ruined in February 2015, he said.
The OSCE will help the effort to repair the bridge and relevant prior preparations so as to restore proper safe civilian movement across the bridge, Hug said.
This repair effort depends on those who control the bridge, he said, describing the situation where civilians on both sides cannot visit relatives, homes, graves or even country houses across the bridge, or have to queue long hours to cross the bridge which was built for them in the first place. Now is the time to repair this bridge and give it to the people who need it, the OSCE official said.
Under the Minsk agreements, this safety zone is supposed to be safe, free from danger; it is not, Hug said. You see armed people – this is not a safe zone, he said.
The SMM will be monitoring the situation in this safety zone, not least with the help of a new frontline patrol base which opened in Stanytsia Luhanska earlier on Saturday, Hug said. This will enable monitors to react to, and report, what happened on the bridge, he said.
Hug said he and his colleagues will work every day to document everything that happens. An important step towards normalization will be precisely the repair of this bridge, and free access to it is essential. The bridge must be safe to cross, that is what the parties [to the conflict] pledged in Minsk to ensure, Hug said.
Speaking of a possibility of opening additional alternative checkpoints on the dividing line, the SMM deputy chief said that these zones must be free from danger and once they are outside of danger, there will be no impediment to opening additional checkpoints.
The SMM is planning to install video surveillance cameras between the LPR and the area controlled by the Ukrainian military, he said. The monitors are examining potential locations where the cameras could be installed, he said.
