Latest from OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine based on information received as of 18:00 (Kyiv time), 25 August 2014

This report is for media and the general public.

In Donetsk the SMM continues to observe the impact of the conflict on the civilian population and infrastructure.

A pro-Ukrainian unity rally, near Shevchenko monument in Kharkiv, gathered around 300 young people, men and women, on 24 August. The SMM observed the participants of the event, organized by the local branch of the Fatherland party, carrying Ukrainian, Svoboda and Right Sector flags. Local party leaders called for “Ukraine’s Unity” and “Ukraine’s European choice”. Speeches celebrated and paid tribute to fallen Ukrainian soldiers and to those currently serving in Donbas.

On 25 August the SMM met with the district head of the State Service for Emergency Situations  in Starobilsk (96 km north of Luhansk), who stated that three convoys of Ukrainian humanitarian assistance, consisting of food-items collected from popular donations, had arrived in the Luhansk region a few weeks earlier. A convoy of 26 trucks from Kharkiv to Starobilsk was unloaded between 8 and 9 August and distributed by the local Red Cross. On 10 and 11 August two convoys, from Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk, consisting of about 34 trucks, arrived in Severodonetsk, where again the local Red Cross organized distribution. The interlocutor also stated that the State Service for Emergency Situations personnel are unarmed, and have continued their work unimpeded in the territory currently under the control of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”).

In Shchastya (24 km north of Luhansk) the SMM talked to a group of pensioners. They said that they have not received their pensions for the past few months and that municipal and regional authorities have distributed food rations (potatoes, carrots, sugar, and salt) but no oil or substantial food items. The interlocutors said they were hungry.

In Donetsk, after being informed by local inhabitants, the SMM visited a Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, located around five kilometres to the west of the city centre. On arrival, the SMM saw that the church was burning. The priest of the church told the SMM that at 12:30 “the church was bombed” and that this had initiated the fire. The SMM saw a one-metre diameter crater in the courtyard of the church, consistent with shelling.

The SMM observed the central square in Pavlohrad (75 km to the east of Dnipropetrovsk) where the Lenin statue had been removed on 24 August. An inhabitant showed pictures of the removal to the SMM and explained that the police had secured the area with a cordon. According to the interlocutor a group of men in camouflage clothing, claiming to be from the volunteer “Aidar” battalion, came with a truck to pull down the statue. He said that the local population from Pavlohrad is fighting on both sides of the conflict in the east. Earlier on 23 August, a statue of Taras Shevchenko had been placed in a nearby park. 

The situation in Kherson was calm.

At Kulikovo Pole in Odessa the SMM monitored on 24 August the regular Sunday anti-Maidan protest, which gathered around 50 middle-aged people. Unrelated to the event, the SMM observed near the Trade Union building more than 300 police in formation being instructed on their assignments and duties throughout the city for that evening.

The situation in Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Kyiv remained calm.