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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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| Information | | |
Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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03May14
OSCE observers freed in Ukraine
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe (OSCE) held by pro-Russian activists have been released in Ukraine, local media said Saturday.
"All the 12 people who are on my list have been freed," the state RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russia's presidential special envoy to Ukraine, Vladimir Lukin, as saying.
Earlier on the day, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, the "people's mayor" of Ukraine's eastern city of Slaviansk, said he intended to release the inspectors detained on April 25 by militia men.
Instead of linking the release to unsafe situation in that governmental forces besieged city, Ponomaryov said "they are my guests, I do not want them to be hurt," Interfax news agency reported.
Ukraine launched a major attack against pro-Russian forces around Slaviansk in the early hours of Friday, a move Russia said would destroy all hopes of fulfilling the Geneva agreements reached on April 17.
A German-led Vienna Document inspection team and their Ukrainian escorts were detained in Ukraine's eastern town of Sloviansk.
The observers, all Europeans, were part of a 12-member military verification team deployed last month by the Vienna-based OSCE in eastern Ukraine to monitor the political and security situation in the country following pro-Russia protests in its eastern region.
The team included seven military officers -- three from Germany and one each from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland and Sweden -- and a German interpreter, along with five members of the Ukrainian military as escorts.
[Source: Xinhua, Moscow, 03May14]
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