DISINFO: OSCE has never recorded the presence of Russian military in Donbas
SUMMARY
Over the years of working in Donbas, the special monitoring mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has never recorded the presence of Russian military in the conflict zone.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring Kremlin narrative that there is a civil war in Ukraine. The war in eastern Ukraine is not a civil conflict, but a well-documented act of aggression by Russian armed forces, ongoing since February 2014. In 2015, during an inspection of the storage sites of heavy weapons of “DNR” militants, OSCE SMM observers saw the Russian military guarding one of the sites. At the same time, the OSCE noted that the Russian military did not have any insignia. In 2016, the deputy chairman of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, Alexander Hug, confirmed to Ukrainian journalists that the OSCE SMM has information that there are Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. In addition, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine systematically records cases of the transfer of both military and weapons from Russia to the occupied territory of Donbas. OSCE has repeatedly emphasised that Russian-separatist forces in eastern Ukraine often use temporarily declared ceasefire in order to receive supplies with arms and ammunition from Russia under the guise of humanitarian aid.