BRUSSELS – Europe and Russia are ready to provide the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with drones and military personnel to maintain them for the monitoring of the Russian-Ukrainian border and ceasefire agreement implementation, Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said on Friday.
‘Italy, France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia said that they would be willing to provide drones and military personnel to operate the equipment, with a view to rapid deployment of the mission. The operation will need to be approved by the OSCE’s permanent Council,’ Mogherini said in a statement following a meeting on Friday with her Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Pavlo Klimkin, and OSCE Chairperson Didier Burkhalter in the margins of the ASEM Summit in Milan.
According to Mogherini, the monitoring will ensure that one of the key points of the Minsk agreement, on which both Ukraine and Russia made an undertaking during today’s meeting, is respected
Moreover, she said that it is important that here in Milan ‘the dialogue between Putin and Poroshenko has been given a new impetus.’
‘The full implementation of the agreements remains complex, but today’s meeting and the work being taking forward as we speak provide an opportunity to make concrete progress,’ she stressed.
