Latest from the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine based on information received until 24 June 2014, 18:00 (Kyiv time)

This update is provided for the media and the public.

The situation across the country was calm. Four SMM monitors from the Donetsk team have been missing for 30 days and four SMM monitors from the Luhansk team for 27 days.

The situation in Kherson was calm. Internally displaced persons (IDPs), recently arrived from Luhansk, informed the SMM that they had received free accommodation, meals and healthcare at a sanatorium in Skadovs'k. The manager of the sanatorium as well as a member of the Skadovs'k Regional Council added that 50 IDPs were staying in the sanatorium, which had a capacity of 150. They both, however, warned that employment opportunities were poor, saying that only two IDPs had so far managed to find temporary employment. They also said that neither the City Council nor the Regional Council had an assigned budget to cater for IDPs. Also in the Kherson region, the SMM spoke to the director of the City Centre for Social Services and the deputy mayor of Kherson. They said that the IDP Co-ordination Centre had already processed 120 displaced persons from Crimea and approximately 800 from Donetsk and Luhansk. Twenty IDPs from Luhansk and Donetsk are arriving in the city every day, they said. They warned that the city’s capacity to accommodate more IDPs would be exhausted in 10 days.

The situation in Odessa was calm. The SMM met a representative of the Good Samaritan Charity Foundation who commented about what he described as a lack of state support. The foundation, is currently refurbishing a housing facility in Mayarkee with a capacity to host 150 IDPs.

The situation in Kharkiv was calm. The head of the Labour and Social Protection Department of the Zmiiv district administration in the Kharkiv region informed the SMM that in the previous nine days, the number of IDPs had increased from 19 to 87 in Zmiiv. Although the district, city and village councils, supported by local people and businesses, are providing food and medicine, he warned that conditions would worsen with the onset of winter, and IDP needs would increase once the school year commenced.

Also in the Kharkiv region, the head of the Izyum district administration told the SMM that there had been “a sharp increase” in the number of IDPs in the district, currently numbering 762.

The situation in Ivano-Frankivsk was calm. The SMM met the head of the Regional IDP Co-ordination Council on 23 June.  He claimed that since mid-June, based on a decision of the Department of Social Affairs of the regional administration, male IDPs – deemed by the administration capable of fighting – were being denied the resettlement lump sum of UAH 500, ordinarily given to IDPs on arrival at their end destination.

[The SMM head office, in co-operation with the UNHCR Office in Ukraine, has organized and has begun to implement a joint training programme of monitors from each of the ten teams on the topic of IDPs. The purpose of this UNHCR-facilitated training, being carried out over the next three weeks, is to strengthen the capacity of the SMM to monitor and report on the situation as regards IDPs.]

The SMM met the mayor of Luhansk City. The mayor stressed that a roundtable meeting – incorporating the so-called ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’, the government of Ukraine, the leader of the armed Cossack faction in the Luhansk region, and the OSCE – should be held in Luhansk city, in order to bring hostilities to an end.

The situation in Lviv was calm. The SMM monitored a gathering outside a military base in Lviv, in which 20-25 parents and relatives of Ukrainian Army conscripts demonstrated against the extension of military service from three to four months, the lack of rotation for their sons/relatives and their inability to get copies of their sons’/relatives’ contracts.

The situation in Kyiv was calm. The SMM monitored a gathering of approximately 150 females who constitute a group called “The Mothers of Sons” in front of the presidential administrative building in Kyiv. The demonstrators were protesting against the conscription of their sons into the Ukrainian Army.

The situation in Donetsk, Chernivtsi and Dnepropetrovsk was calm.