Zannier: 'New weapons seem to appear all the time' [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.dw.de/zannier-new-weapons-seem-to-appear-all-the-time/a-18243395

The OSCE's Secretary General Lamberto Zannier told DW he's worried about arms in eastern Ukraine. He also emphasized his organization's role in any attempt to implement a ceasefire in the troubled region.

Zannier: 'New weapons seem to appear all the time'
08.02.2015
Interview: Roman Gocharenko

DW: You have more than 400 OSCE observers on the ground. Do you know who the Ukrainian army is fighting against?

Lamberto Zannier: We have people in Donetsk, we have people in Luhansk. We have lots of contacts - we even had some of our observers be caught and detained for protracted periods by some of these separatist groups. We have, unfortunately, become very familiar with this very diverse group of fighters in eastern Ukraine. Many of them tell us they come from Russia and they have their own interpretation of this fight. This makes this conflict increasingly complex.

What concerns us is that we see hostility result in armaments being destroyed, but new weapons seem to appear all the time. This never ends, unfortunately. We also see the heavy price that the civilian population is paying for this conflict. We have seen many cases of artillery systems placed in residential areas. This, of course, calls for fire from the other side that can cause a lot of collateral damage. My first point would be to ask everyone to move artillery systems and heavy military equipment out of inhabited areas.

What is the situation on the Ukrainian-Russian border? How big are the holes in the border and what is going on there?

We have two teams of border monitors present 24 hours a day, seven days a week at two border-crossing points between Russia and Ukraine. However these are only two out of eight crossing points not controlled by the Ukrainian government. And the border is easily crossable, with no natural obstacles. Therefore monitoring the border would require a very intense operation with lots of people and technical means.

We have two drones, one of which recently had an accident. So our ability to monitor the border is really hampered. There have also been attempts to shoot down our drones. We have even recorded some of the separatists trying to shoot them down and we've experienced heavy jamming of the drones' control system.