News and press releases

COPENHAGEN, 29 October – OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Ilkka Kanerva (MP, Finland) issued the following statement today on the early parliamentary elections in Ukraine:..

The situation remained calm on Election Day throughout most of Ukraine, including around Shchastya in the Luhansk region, where a local truce seems to have been arranged, and in Donetsk city. A number of frontline villages to the south of Donetsk city were, however, subjected to shelling...

BERN, 27 October 2014- Didier Burkhalter, Swiss Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, congratulated Ukrainians for taking part in the early elections of the parliamentary assembly. Taking good note of the preliminary findings of the International Election Observation Mission that these elections marked an important step in Ukraine’s aspirations to consolidate democratic elections in line with its international commitments, he thanked the election observation mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) and the observation delegation of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly as well as other international institutions for their engagement...

The SMM continued to monitor the implementation of the provisions of the Minsk Protocol and Memorandum. The situation in Luhansk and Donetsk remained tense. Police in Odessa told the SMM about discovered explosives and one RPG in one of the wagons of a passenger train coming from Luhansk...

Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Russian Federation – The Observer Mission (OM) is operating at full capacity. Cross-border traffic flows remained relatively steady at both Border Crossing Points (BCPs) but the total number of border-crossings has again decreased. More people left than entered the Russian Federation (RF) at the two observed BCPs although this return movement has continued to slow down. The OM observed again a considerable number of persons in military-style clothing crossing the border in both directions, few of them apparently belonging to Cossack units. Truck convoys continued to transport coal from the Luhansk region to the RF...

VIENNA, 22 October 2014 – Following recent death threats against two reporters in Bosnia and Herzegovina, OSCE media freedom representative Dunja Mijatović today called on authorities to thoroughly and swiftly investigate all threats against media representatives...

YEREVAN, 17 October 2014 – The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group from the Russian Federation and France (Ambassador Igor Popov and Ambassador Pierre Andrieu) traveled to the region this week to meet with government leaders and participate in an OSCE Monitoring Mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The Co-Chairs were joined by the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk. U.S. Co-Chair Ambassador James Warlick could not attend for personal reasons, but the U.S. side was represented on the trip...