Russian monitors to add up to OSCE mission in Ukraine

Russia has submitted another fifteen candidacies of experts to join the monitoring mission of the European security organization OSCE in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference here on Thursday.
"Slightly more than twenty Russian citizens are working on that mission at present and we’ve named another fifteen candidacies in the light of a recent decision by the OSCE Standing Committee to increase the mission’s numerical strength up to a thousand persons," Lavrov said.
He recalled that the OSCE had long-established regulations for forming international missions and its rules did not admit of any discrimination along the criteria of ethnic identity or citizenship.
"When the Ukrainian leadership asked the OSCE to deploy a special monitoring mission in the country, the /Kiev/ government gave consent to the application of these regulations and principles," Lavrov said.