Russian military mission sent to eastern Ukraine
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E-mail Xinhua, December 11, 2014
Russia has sent a group of military officers to Ukraine's Donetsk region at Kiev's request to facilitate peaceful settlement of the crisis, Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces said Wednesday.
"Upon the request of commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Victor Muzhenko, representatives of Russian armed forces have been dispatched to Donetsk region," Valery Gerasimov said.
The mission group is to assist monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to look for compromises between the conflicting sides in Ukraine's eastern regions, he said.
The Russian and OSCE representatives will try to defuse tension there by persuading the sides to withdraw their heavy arms from the dividing line, which is not a smooth progress, Interfax news agency quoted Gerasimov as saying.
The current main task now is to stop artillery shelling of the cities in Donbass, the local name given to eastern Ukraine, Gerasimov said.
The Ukrainian government and pro-independence rebels in Donetsk and Lugansk inked a ceasefire agreement on Sept. 5 in Minsk, capital of Belarus, at a meeting also attended by envoys from Russia and the OSCE.
Gerasimov blamed NATO and the United States for "continuous external meddling in the domestic affairs of sovereign states throughout the year."
The promotion of the so-called "hostile Russia" against the backdrop of the Ukrainian crisis has helped NATO justify its intensified military activities near Russian borders, Gerasimov said.
Speaking at a meeting with foreign military attaches, Gerasimov stressed that the West was "seeking to turn Ukraine into a source of long-term instability controlled by the West," which directly damages Russia's geopolitical interests.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Kiev to bridge the gap in direct coordination with Lugansk and Donetsk regions as soon as possible.
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