Russia's proposal to send peacekeepers to Donbass to protect members of the OSCE monitoring mission on the front line was doomed to failure because of differences in the perception of this mission, experts believe. As Kristel Nean writes in AgoraVox, "the aim of Ukraine and the United States is to do a remake of the Serbian Krajina in Donbass: send peacekeepers as an invasion force to disarm the armies of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and block the border, thus depriving them of Russia's potential support. Then the blue helmets will turn a blind eye to ethnic cleansing, and the Ukrainian forces and the Nazi battalions will be opposed by only the unarmed population. If the Kiev and Washington strategists really think that Russia and Donbass will endorse such a plan, they are cruelly mistaken. "
Indeed, such a plan will not be accepted in Russia. However, as the Chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee for Foreign Affairs Konstantin Kosachev said, this issue was discussed in the framework of an ad hoc meeting in the Security Council: "Russia's draft of the relevant resolution of the Security Council was introduced and registered. There is no alternative draft resolution, including the Ukrainian one. We have not seen any counter-proposals on paper, so the discussion regarding our project could have long ago led to some result. But the US and Ukraine do not want to open a discussion. They do not make their own alternative proposals officially, although we understand what they will look like - an attempt will be made to secure the deployment of UN peacekeepers on the border between Russia and Ukraine. This does not comply with the Minsk agreements. Minsk II was supported by the UN Security Council resolution, it is a UN document, and not just a document of those parties that signed it. No next UN Security Council decision can contradict the previous one by definition."
According to Kosachev, the United Nations peacekeeping mission should be very definite - to ensure the activities of the OSCE observation mission: "There is an OSCE observation mission, which is unarmed, unprotected and constantly facing problems - both logistical and security-related. These issues need to be addressed. It is necessary to ensure the possibility of the OSCE mission to act in full accordance with its mandate, and not on the good or evil will of the parties in this conflict. That's why we have UN peacekeepers. Since the mission itself operates mainly along the inter-entity boundary line, UN peacekeepers also must be there. If the OSCE mission has any other routes, of course, UN peacekeepers should follow these routes as well, including deep into the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk, but it is clear that after receiving a consent of the authorities that exercise control over the situation in these territories.
Kosachev expressed the opinion that the Ukrainian side delays discussion of this issue in the UN Security Council in order to delay the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
