Resolution: European Parliament not against EU peacekeepers in Donbas

This is stated in the European Parliament’s Resolution on Association Agreements / Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, adopted on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The European Parliament notes the calls by the Ukrainian Government for an extended international peacekeeping force along the Ukraine-Russia border and in the Luhansk and Donetsk districts," reads the document.

The MEPs agree that, once the situation permits and as part of the full implementation of the Minsk Agreement, an EU-led CSDP mission should be offered for deployment to the parties in the conflict.

The MEPs have expressed serious concern about the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. The European Parliament stresses that the Russian authorities bear a particular responsibility in this connection. It is noted that ceasefire violations have been increasing since mid-October 2015, that monitors from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) continue to experience restrictions on their freedom of movement, that the restoration of Ukrainian control over the full length of its border with Russia has not materialised, that no agreement was reached on the modalities for the local elections in the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk, and that not all prisoners and illegally detained persons, such as Nadiya Savchenko and Oleg Sentsov, have been released.

The document also expresses the firm support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. The European Parliament calls on the Russian Federation to end its occupation of Crimea and to put an immediate end to all direct or indirect involvement in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

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