Latest from OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine based on information received as of 18:00 hrs, 6 August 2014

This update is provided for media and general public.

The SMM together with Dutch, Malaysian and Australian teams of experts went to the village of Rozsypne to encourage inhabitants to hand over any remaining personal belongings. In Donetsk the SMM observed areas affected by alleged shelling.

The SMM, together with 64 experts and police, went to the village of Rozsypne (73 km east of Donetsk city), where inhabitants handed over some personal belongings of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash. No human remains were found in the area by the experts. The villagers told the SMM about the lack of electricity and water; and several expressed concern that food supplies were running low, especially bread. They said that frequent shelling was heard in the village.

The experts reconfirmed that the “Emergency Services” of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” (“DPR”) had, in conducting search operations, behaved in a professional manner. The SMM observed a military truck heading from Rozsypne to Nikishyne (90 km northeast of Donetsk) with at least five uniformed and armed men, with a Ukrainian flag mounted on the truck. In the village of Rozsypne the SMM heard automatic gunfire emanating from the north. One ricochet hit a tree line near the SMM and experts’ convoy. The SMM and the experts ceased their work. An escort consisting of representatives of the “DPR” and the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”) led the convoy out of the village centre. After approximately one hour, when “LPR” and “DPR” escorts had cleared the passage through their last checkpoint, the convoy continued its return to its base.

In Donetsk city the security situation deteriorated. On the night of 5 and 6 August, the SMM heard explosions and small arms fire at various intervals, but could not determine their source or the parties involved. The SMM also heard fighter jets overhead. On 6 August the SMM went to the east part of the city, to an area allegedly subjected to recent shelling. The SMM saw several craters, approximately three metres in diameter and two metres in depth; and a single piece of unexploded ordnance marked “OFAB100”. No fatalities had been reported.  

The SMM was informed by a Ukrainian army high official that the main generator which was partly ensuring electricity in Luhansk city was damaged during recent shelling. Consequently, Luhansk city is now completely left without electricity and subsequently internet coverage.

In Kharkiv the SMM attended a regular session of the city council at which the mayor granted honorary Ukrainian citizenship to two Russian citizens. One hundred people – monitored by the SMM – then protested outside the mayor’s office, at one point being physically held back by police from entering the office. After negotiations the police agreed to allow five protestors to enter the mayor’s office.

The SMM met with the chief of police in Melitopol (180 km southeast of Dnepropetrovsk city) who spoke about new checkpoints in the area, which, he said, were in response to a heightened security risk emanating from Crimea. He mentioned one checkpoint, located south of Melitopol, manned by police, National Guard, territorial defence and the Ukrainian army. Another checkpoint, east of the city, is still under construction and run by traffic police officers.

The SMM saw in Chaplynka (115 km south of Kherson), at the administrative boundary line to Crimea, a traffic queue of approximately four kilometres, consisting of commercial trucks crossing into the peninsula. Ukrainian border guards said that there was no communication between them and their counterparts in Crimea.

The situation remained calm in Odessa, in particular at Kulikove Pole and at the Regional headquarters of the Ministry of Interior, where a number of protests had taken place in previous days. 

The situation in the Chernivtsi and Lviv regions remained calm.

In Ivano-Frankivsk city the SMM met a representative of a group of volunteers collecting non-combat supplies for the Ukrainian army. The interlocutor said that the volunteer group worked closely with “Self-defence” and the military conscript office.

In Kyiv the SMM spoke to representatives of displaced persons from Crimea, who confirmed information suggesting that one Ukrainian mobile phone operator had been transferred to the mobile network of the Russian Federation. Calls to/from this operator from/to the mainland are now treated as international calls, and charged accordingly. Two other Ukrainian operators were operating as before, he said.