The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine has not yet explained how its armored vehicles ended up loaned to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi battalion Azov in Mariupol last month, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday
VIENNA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st March, 2022) The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine has not yet explained how its armored vehicles ended up loaned to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi battalion Azov in Mariupol last month, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday.
"For example, there is still no answer to the question why the mission did not report that its marked armored vehicles were handed over to the neo-Nazi armed group Azov in late February in Mariupol. Everyone is stubbornly silent about the circumstances that are well known," Lukashevich told the meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council.
He noted that on March 20, after the SMM was completely evacuated from Mariupol, one of the marked OSCE vehicles was spotted not in the parking lot near the mission office, but three miles away, where it had evidently been used in hostilities, given the nature of the damages.
"Such approaches have jeopardized the efforts of the entire OSCE to promote a peaceful resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine," Lukashevich added.
According to Lukashevich, the OSCE SMM also did not notice the progressing russophobia and the aggressive promotion of nationalism by the government in Kiev.
On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces.
