InformNapalm has repeatedly written about OSCE’s dubious role in the occupied part of the Donbas in Ukraine. Back in 2014, we had to ask the same question multiple times: what do the OSCE representatives really do when they visit terrorist’s positions?

It was strange that even though the OSCE representatives spent plenty of time visiting terrorists, they didn’t detect violations of the Minsk agreement or saw the terrorists attacking Ukrainian positions with heavy weapons even when it happened in front of their eyes. What did OSCE representatives see at terrorist positions? Why couldn’t they recognize Russian military equipment as Russian made?

Coordinates for the OSCE

In 2015, InformNapalm took the task of publishing a whole series of articles entitled “Coordinates for OSCE”. We offered OSCE the coordinates of Russian military equipment in the occupied part of the Donbas.

During 2016, the OSCE showed an improvement. The wording of the reports became more precise, specific, and much more objective. The reports no longer just said “there was a lot of shelling”, but were more thorough, providing detailed descriptions of the incidents in the ATO zone. A good critique of this gradual development was made by the Ukrainian journalist Viktor Tregubov in February 2016 in the article OSCE’s Role in Disrupting the Implementation of the ‘Minsk Agreements’.

Not appropriate for a OSCE representative

Now, attention has once again been brought to OSCE and its activities. Tim Zlatkin is a Ukrainian blogger and volunteer who has been collecting donations to the ATO troops since 2014. He also runs aid transports to the front line. He has posted on his Facebook page a video showing a meeting between OSCE representatives and “LPR” terrorists.

At the center of the video is the grim procedure of OSCE retrieving the remains of three Ukrainian soldiers killed by a landmine on November 23 in a terrorist controlled area. In the video, an OSCE representative approaches a terrorist with open arms, then hugs him saying, “Hello, my dear, why haven’t I had any calls from you?” in accent-free Russian, and a few minutes later salutes him when leaving.

We will let our readers decide for themselves whether it is appropriate for a representative of an international observer mission who comes to terrorists to retrieve the remains of Ukrainian soldiers to behave this way…

Updated November 28, 2017:

Bloggers have helped identify the person standing next to the van with the remains of Ukrainian soldiers, who was greeted so warmly by the OSCE representative. This is Andrey Marochko, a collaborator and a former Ukrainian police officer, who since 2014 has been serving as a “spokesman” for the “LPR People’s Militia”. This scum caught the attention of bloggers a few days ago, when he was shown in a video made by the “LPR People’s Militia” answering a call on a fallen Ukrainian soldier’s cell phone and calmly telling the soldier’s mother, “Sorry, but your son has died.”

This is an unbelievable level of cynicism. But it is equally hard to believe that a representative of a presumably neutral international observer mission would call such a person “my dear”.

This publication was prepared by Irina Schlegel specially for InformNapalm. 

Translated by Donbassföreningen Sverige
(Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0)
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