The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe is seriously concerned by the detention of military observers in eastern Ukraine and calls for their immediate release.
“The committee calls for the immediate release of all monitors still detained and appeals to all those who may be able to contribute to such a release to undertake all necessary steps to this end without delay and expresses the hope that a swift solution will be found,” the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe said in a statement issued on April 30.
The Committee of Ministers said that the monitors carried out a visit to Ukraine on the basis of the OSCE Vienna document 2011 on confidence- and security-building measures.
It said it condemns this clear breach of the provisions of the Vienna document.
As reported, unidentified men stopped a bus carrying OSCE inspectors on the outskirts of Sloviansk on April 25 and escorted the bus to the city.
The 8-member OSCE group is comprised of four experts from Germany and one each from Sweden, Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Swedish OSCE expert Ingvi Thomas Johanson, who suffers from diabetes, was later released.
