Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday supported deploying an international force to eastern Ukraine to help protect monitors observing the conflict, but Kiev poured cold water on his plan. "I consider the presence of peacekeepers - one could call them not peacekeepers, but people who ensure the safety of the OSCE mission - to be completely appropriate," Putin told a press conference following a BRICS summit in China.
He insisted that any force should only "assure the security" of the unarmed mission from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). It should be restricted to operating on the "demarcation line" between Ukranian troops and Russian-backed rebels, and only deployed once heavy weaponry has been withdrawn, Putin said. The Kremlin chief ordered his foreign ministry to prepare a UN Security Council resolution on deploying the force. Some 600 international OSCE observers are on the ground in eastern Ukraine, but their presence has failed to stop fighting in a conflict that has killed 10,000 people since 2014.
Ukraine - which has previously called for UN peacekeepers to be sent in - accuses Russia of being behind the insurgency that has gripped swathes of its former industrial heartland. Despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement, Moscow continues to deny the allegations by Ukraine and the West.
Sceptical officials in Kiev immediately rejected the proposal with the foreign ministry saying that it was designed "to distort the very ideas and goals of a peacekeeping mission." "Ukraine, as a consistent supporter of the initiative for a UN peacekeeping force in Donbass, is ready to work on this issue," a statement said. But Kiev insisted it would have to give the green light to the force and that any deployment needed to be accompanied by a withdrawal of "all occupying troops" and help re-establish control of the rebel-held border with Russia. "There can be no discussion of any military or other personnel from the side of the aggressor on Ukrainian territory in the guise of peacekeepers," the statement said.
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