Last week, the leaders of the so-called Normandy Quartet, comprising Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine held phone talks and confirmed their commitment to implementation of the Minsk agreements on settling the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
Soon after the negotiations, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s press service said that the sides supported deploying an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) special police mission to Donbass.
The following day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the parties to the Monday negotiations discussed arming the existing OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass, but not creating a police mission.
“This is not included in the Minsk agreements. Donbass won’t allow this. According to the Minsk agreements, it should be agreed with Donbass without any exception of steps in settling [the crisis],” Lavrov said during a live linkup on kp.ru.
Both Poroshenko and Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin have repeatedly called for deployment of a police mission to Donbass in order to control the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.