News and press releases

Forty-eight officers of Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service and State Fiscal Service were trained to identify toxic chemicals and respond to emergency situations at border crossings in a series of two intensive four-day sessions in the Orshanets Training Center, the Cherkasy Region.

VIENNA, 26 April 2019 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Harlem Désir, today called for the release of the former journalists of the newspaper Cumhuriyet, after they were returned to prison yesterday.

A five-day OSCE-supported train-the-trainer course on the detection of forged travel documents and identification techniques for 21 border service officers concluded in Almaty, Kazakhstan on 26 April 2019.

An OSCE-supported two-day roundtable discussion on the development of renewable energy sector in Turkmenistan took place in Ashgabat from 25 to 26 April 2019.

The first in a series of four OSCE-supported training seminars for representatives of the government, civil society and judiciary on human rights protection mechanisms concluded in Kazakhstan’s Zhambyl Region on 26 April 2019.

BRATISLAVA, 25 April 2018- It was with deep concern that the Slovak OSCE Chairmanship received the news about the decree signed by the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, on simplifying the procedure of granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainians residing in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.

Compared with the previous reporting period, the SMM recorded fewer ceasefire violations in Donetsk region and more in Luhansk region. The Mission recorded ceasefire violations and saw fresh craters near the Zolote disengagement area. The SMM observed weapons in violation of the withdrawal lines in non-government-controlled areas. The Mission saw mines near Vesela Hora and Novoselivka, unexploded ordnance near Debaltseve and mine hazard signs near Novohryhorivka, Horlivka and Chermalyk, some for the first time. The Mission saw the body of a deceased man at the entry-exit checkpoint in Maiorsk and continued to observe hardships faced by civilians at checkpoints along the contact line. The Mission facilitated and monitored adherence to the ceasefire to enable repairs to essential civilian infrastructure in both Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Restrictions of the Mission’s access continued in all three disengagement areas. The SMM was also restricted at checkpoints of the armed formations in Kreminets, as well as in southern Donetsk region near Verkhnoshyrokivske, Oleksandrivske, Novoazovsk and Zaichenko.