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

This report is for media and the general public.

Focusing on the Minsk Protocol and Memorandum, the SMM continued monitoring the situation in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, still noting that violence is continuing in a number of places.

A representative of the Kharkiv Regional Employment Centre told the SMM in Kharkiv that from 1 May to 6 October, 9,269 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Crimean peninsula had requested help in finding employment. Of those, only 1,331 were registered by the centre – after having had their employment histories verified – and 400 were helped find a job, according to the interlocutor.

The SMM noted that the situation was calm at the Melove Border Crossing Point (136 km north-east of Luhansk city) on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Ukrainian border guards said they had observed no significant movement of military personnel or hardware in the area, and none across the border, recently. The Border Crossing Point was, according to border guards at the time, subject to an RPG attack (see Daily Report of 11 August 2014).

The SMM heard a total of six rounds – of an unspecified nature – impacting in the north of Donetsk city at two separate times – at midday and in the late afternoon. Residents of a north-eastern suburb of the city also told the SMM that the area had been shelled the previous evening, consistent with what the SMM had heard at the time (see Daily Report of 6 October 2014). The SMM visited the area and noted some shrapnel damage, numerous craters, and what appeared to be an Uragan rocket in the area. A number of residents told the SMM that a man and woman had required hospitalization as a result of the shelling.

Ukrainian checkpoint commanders at various locations to the north and north-east of Mariupol (113 km south of Donetsk city) told the SMM of shelling directed at the checkpoints the previous evening. The SMM – whilst at the checkpoints – neither observed nor heard shelling, nor saw any indication that shelling may have recently taken place.

Whilst in Debaltseve (75 km north-east of Donetsk city), the SMM was informed by a senior Ukrainian military officer that there had in the previous 24 hours been 76 “ceasefire” violations – 42 by the separatists and 34 by the Ukrainian Army – in the Debaltseve area, resulting in one fatality and 13 injuries. The SMM observed no incidents in the area, and saw nothing that would substantiate the allegations made by the officer.

The situation remained calm in Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson.

The self-styled ataman (commander) of the “the Black Sea Cossack Army” – which is constituted as an NGONGO
non-governmental organization in Odessa city – told the SMM  that the 3,000 members of the group had been subject to what he described as persecution, following the 2 May Trade Union Building fire incident in Odessa. He informed the SMM that the members of the NGO were receiving military training to defend themselves against possible attack. 

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