Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini and the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin and Russia, Serghei Lavrov, met today with the Chairperson of the OSCE, Didier Burkhalter, to work on an OSCE mission to monitor the line of the Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire. The meeting, which took place in the margins of the ASEM Summit in Milan, was agreed at this morning’s summit with the Ukrainian and Russian Presidents, Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin. 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.
“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”, said Mogherini. “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”.
