News and press releases

• Compared with the previous reporting period, the Mission recorded fewer ceasefire violations in both Donetsk and Luhansk regions. • A girl was injured due to an explosion near Vesele and a woman was injured due to shelling in Zaitseve. • The SMM saw fresh damage and craters caused by shelling near residential houses in Pikuzy. • It saw weapons in violation of withdrawal lines on both sides of the contact line. • Anti-tank mines were spotted near Krasnohorivka and Olenivka, some for the first time, and unexploded ordnance was seen near Donetsk city. • Civilians faced hardship and long queues at checkpoints in Luhansk and Donetsk regions. • The SMM facilitated and monitored adherence to the ceasefire to enable repairs to and the operation of critical civilian infrastructure on both sides of the contact line. • Restrictions of the SMM’s access continued in all three disengagement areas and elsewhere. The SMM’s freedom of movement was also restricted at a heavy weapons holding area in a government-controlled area of Donetsk region and at a border crossing point near non-government-controlled Dovzhanske.*

A roundtable meeting on the rehabilitation and reintegration of juvenile offenders was held in Dushanbe on 11 June 2019. The event was jointly organized by the OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe and Tajikistan’s Ministry of Justice.

Albania, Finland and Poland have renewed the mandates or, alternatively, appointed new members to the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration Court for new terms of six years after the previous mandates of their members expired. The appointments of the conciliators, the arbitrators and their alternates were made in accordance with Articles 3 and 4 of the Convention on Conciliation and Arbitration within the OSCE, which was signed in 1992 in Stockholm...

VIENNA, 12 June 2019 – Following reports that several journalists have been verbally assaulted and intimidated in recent days in Moldova, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Harlem Désir, today called on the authorities to ensure safe working conditions for journalists...

OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger and other high-level OSCE officials visited the Austrian Armed Forces International Centre (AUTINT) in Götzendorf, Lower Austria, on 24 May 2019 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Centre’s provision of pre-deployment training for the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM). He was accompanied by the Chief Monitor of the SMM, Ertugrul Apakan, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Slovakia to the OSCE, Ambassador Katarina Zakova, and the current Chief of the Austrian General Staff Directorate, Major General Bruno Hofbauer.

SKOPJE, 12 June 2019 – The OSCE Mission to Skopje presented today the second interim report on the activities and cases of the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), resulting from the Mission’s trial monitoring observations.

Vienna, 11 June 2019- The report of the International Conference on Tackling Modern Slavery, Forced Labour and Human Trafficking in Public Procurement Supply Chains, held in London in March this year, was published today.