DPR Defense Ministry: If Kiev wants to deploy peacemakers, let them do it

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) authorities are content with deployment of the UN peacemaking contingent in the south of Ukraine, as President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko suggested yesterday, Eduard Basurin, Defense Minister of the DPR said today, on February 19.

 “If they want to deploy [peacemakers], let them do it,” Basurin said in Donetsk. He pointed at the Ukraine president’s contradictory statements. “At first, he said they need no help. Then, he said he can do nothing without that assistance, especially without military aid. Now, he says they need peacemakers,” Basurin said. “At the very beginning of the conflict, the self-defense forces suggested Russia and all the (UN) Security Council countries to consider deployment of peacemakers,” he said.

Addressing the initiative of Ukraine’s leadership, DPR representative Andrey Purgin said: “If we need any peacemakers, it is the peacemakers of the Russian Federation. At present, the OSCE has assumed control over the situation. It is a temporary measure,” Purgin said.

It is noteworthy that DPR chief negotiator in the Minsk Contact Group Denis Pushilin said the DPR authorities are against deployment of the UN peacemakers in Donbass. Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vitaly Churkin also opposed the deployment of UN peacemakers in the east of Ukraine saying it violates the Minsk agreements of February 12. State Duma Chairman Sergey Naryshkin shared his views: “The Minsk agreements do not provide for such measure (as deployment of peacemakers), and I think, it may erode the Minsk agreements.”