Dialogue over missing OSCE monitors

The 57-nation Vienna-based OSCE is currently headed by Swiss President Didier Burkhalter Keystone

Two teams of monitors of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) who disappeared in eastern Ukraine over the past week are thought to be “in good shape”, an OSCE spokesman said on Sunday.

Speaking to journalists outside the OSCE’s office in Kiev, Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman of a special OSCE mission, said: “We’re quite confident that they’re in good shape, they haven’t been harmed.”

Bociurkiw said the organisation is in talks with a number of groups in eastern Ukraine regarding the release of four workers – including a Swiss – who disappeared in the Donetsk region on Monday and four workers plus a Ukrainian translator who were stopped by armed men in the town of Severodonetsk, 100 kilometres north of Luhansk, on Thursday.

“We’re engaged in dialogue on a wide number of levels. We’ve been on the ground in that region for about two months now and we’re well known to many people who hold sway in those areas so we’re in a good position, we feel, to get our colleagues back to base,” Bociurkiw said.

OSCE presence in Ukraine

Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, who chairs the organisation this year, has expressed concern about the deteriorating security situation in eastern Ukraine.

In a telephone conversation on Friday with Ukraine’s president-elect Petro Poroshenko, Burkhalter said the detentions of OSCE staff were unacceptable.

He thanked Poroshenko for the support of the Ukrainian authorities in working towards the “immediate and unconditional release” of the detained staff, according to an OSCE statement on Friday.

Burkhalter said the detention of members of the OSCE monitoring mission was restricting the ability of the observers to carry out their tasks.

There are currently 210 European and 70 local OSCE observers in Ukraine. Their mandate is to facilitate dialogue between the pro-Russian rebels and the government in Kiev.

“Sabotage”

On Wednesday, Burkhalter denounced the kidnapping as “a sabotage of international efforts to help Ukraine survive this crisis”.

He added the observers were doing important work; they form part of a larger team who are on the ground gathering information about the political situation in Ukraine and who also observed the presidential elections on May 25.

Rebels in Eastern Ukraine have declared the Donetsk and Luhansk regions independent from the rest of Ukraine, supported by controversial referendums rejected by Ukraine and the West.

There have been subsequent clashes with Ukrainian forces and appeals by the rebels to join Russia. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far ignored that request in the face of Western sanctions and isolation.

Putin has said he would back a peace plan brokered by the OSCE that lays out a plan for ending the violence and creating a political dialogue.

First group ‘kidnapped’?

An insurgent leader in eastern Ukraine has said his group kidnapped the first group of four observers that went missing.

Vyacheslav Ponomarev, who has declared himself mayor of the city of Slovyansk in the eastern Ukranian Donetsk region, told the media on Thursday that the monitors were safe and would be released.

However, it is not clear when they will come free.

Last month, seven OSCE military observers were detained by pro-Russian separatists for more than a week.