Moscow – The Kremlin on Thursday denied reports that Russia has agreed to send a police mission to eastern Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow.
“Allegations that there are records of the Normandy Quartet conversations.
“It somehow indicating that the Russian side agreed to the deployment of an OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) police mission is not true.
“There were no agreements on the subject, while any decisions to settle the Ukraine crisis should consider the position of representatives of the Donbass region,’’ Peskov said.
According to him, there is a willingness to discuss this issue of deploying an OSCE police mission.
He added that the option of sending a monitoring mission to the contact line was also being considered.
On May 24, leaders of the Normandy Four, namely Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, held a telephone conversation.
According to an online statement from the Ukrainian president, the four leaders supported the deployment of an OSCE police mission in the insurgent Ukrainian region of Donbass and the beginning of consultations on the issue.
However, an official Kremlin statement on the conversation did not mention the deployment of the police mission, but merely stressed the importance of an immediate ceasefire and start of a direct dialogue between the conflicting parties.
Peskov said then that the talk was not about sending a special police mission, but only about the possibility of arming the OSCE monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine. (Xinhua/NAN)