Kyiv, June 2, 2014 – Overall situation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions remains extremely tense, the issue of public safety and maintaining public order causes international observers’ concern due to the terrorist groups activity. Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of OSCE still possesses no information of 4 observers from Donetsk team and 4 interpreteurs from Luhansk interpreting team, who got out of touch on May 26 and May 29 correspondingly. «We are asking those who is holding our colleagues hostage or possesses any information of their location, to contact us», – said Michael Bociurkiw, SMM spokeasman during his media briefing in Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
The spokesman informed that the connection with 4 observers monitoring the situation in Eastern part of Donetsk region got lost at 19.00 pm on Monday. According to recent reports, they are still at the region, on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk regions. On Thursday, also around 19.00 pm, our team was detained in Severodonetsk by armed people. There were four observers and a Ukrainian interpreteur among them.
«We keep on pulling all the possible wires, using diplomatic channels, state bodies and any operating data to find our colleagues. – said Mr. Bociurkiw. – I would like to emphasize that our mission is an official delegation having arrived to Ukraine by Ukrainian government’s invitation in coordination with the OSCE Council, comprising 57 countries, Russian Federation among them, and more than 50 percent of our observers are still in the Eastern regions of Ukraine».
Mission has been working two months by now, it numbers over 324 observers in 10 cities with representatives of more than 40 countries and keeps reporting on the current situation in the country on weekly basis.
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