Latest from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, based on information received by 18:00hrs, 24 July (Kyiv time)

This report is provided for media and general public.

The remains of some of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash were flown from Kharkiv to the Netherlands. There were a number of protests against military mobilisation in the west of the country.

On 23 July the SMM spoke to ex-Sloviansk Mayor Schtepa, currently in pre-trial detention in Kharkiv city, charged with “causing people’s deaths” whilst trying to allegedly undermine “Ukraine's territorial integrity and inviolability” (Article 110 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code). In the conversation with SMM, she admitted to giving interviews supporting separatism, but said she had been forced to do so, saying she had been held captive by irregular armed forces in the Donetsk region for 81 days, during which time, she claimed, she had been beaten and tortured.

In Kharkiv city, the Dutch Defence Ministry official co-ordinating international experts dealing with the remains of victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash spoke to the SMM. He said that two aircraft with remains had left for the Netherlands on 23 July, and another was expected to leave on 24 July.

The SMM visited two sites related to the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash, observing large pieces of aircraft debris, some of which, at one site, had been moved. The SMM also noted some small pieces of human remains, and what appeared to be hand luggage, unzipped and empty. Access to the sites was unhindered.

Following its re-location from Luhansk city on 21 July, due to heavy shelling, the SMM team has been re-located in its entirety to Starobilsk (85km north of Luhansk city) in the north of the Luhansk region, and will continue work from this location.  

A municipal official in Nikopol (123km south of Dnipropetrovsk) told the SMM on 23 July that there were 235 displaced persons in the town; 219 from the east and 19 from Crimea. He said that 40 people from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk – recently re-taken by the Ukrainian military – had returned home.

The head of an NGONGO
non-governmental organization in Nikopol told the SMM that what she described as an inefficient and corrupt judicial system was the main obstacle to improving the human rights situation in Ukraine. Another Nikopol-based NGO activist told the SMM that his organisation wanted to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Regional Prosecutor’s Office, foreseeing the investigation of alleged corruption at judicial and municipal levels. No response has been received from the Regional Prosecutor’s Office, he said.  

On 21 July the SMM met a sociologist and lecturer in Kherson, who decried what he called a debasement of political culture in Ukraine, saying extremism was gaining a foothold and freedom of speech was being infringed. He said a propaganda war, waged in Ukrainian and Russian media, was on-going, leaving deep fault lines in society.

On 23 July at the Kairka vehicle checkpoint on the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) between the Kherson and Crimea regions, a Ukrainian border guard told the SMM that Ukrainian border guards sometimes prevented people with invalid travel documents (expired passports or passports issued by the de facto Crimean authorities) from crossing the ABL.

The situation in Odessa remained calm.

The mayor of Voloka (12km south of Chernivtsi) told the SMM that approximately 1,500 local inhabitants had demonstrated against military mobilisation on 24 July.

On 23 July the SMM observed 500 people in Bohorodchany (20km southwest of Ivano-Frankivsk) protesting, reportedly, for the second day against military mobilisation. The head of the District Council reassured the crowd that call-up orders had already been rescinded. A “self-defence” leader from Ivano-Frankivsk, who led the protest, told the SMM that 27,000 men in the Ivano-Frankivsk region were expected to be mobilised. He added that he intended to establish a separate “self-defence” battalion to fight in the east.

On 23 July a UNHCR representative in Lviv told the SMM, at a meeting convened by the deputy governor the previous day bringing together regional officials and NGO activists, that it had been agreed that a temporary registration document for IDPs, living in the Lviv region, should be issued. The document would, according to the UNHCR official, help facilitate IDPs from Crimea to cross the ABL.

At a press conference in Kyiv, a member of the Ukrainian Institute of Analysis and Politics Management and a member of the Ukrainian Federation of Professional Security Officers said that more than 53,000 individuals would be mobilised for military service. They said that this phase of mobilisation would cost the Ukrainian exchequer at least UAH 20 billion (EUR 1.28 billion). They suggested that the Ukrainian military should modify its approach in order to minimise casualties in the east.