The representative of Ukraine in the Tripartite Contact Group for Donbas settlement, Leonid Kuchma, rejected Russia's recent proposal of the deployment of peacekeepers as unacceptable.
Talking to a briefing in the city of Dnipro on Friday, 8 September, Kuchma said that "Russia wants to drive this situation into an impassable corner."
Kuchma expressed hopes that the peacekeeping contingents should be located throughout the occupied territories of Ukraine.
He did not rule out that peacekeeping forces can be deployed along the line of contact, "but definitely along the Ukrainian-Russian border." The border is the "sancta sanctorum", he stressed
Kuchma reminded that a 400-km stretch of Ukraine's unprotected border is "purely a Russian border".
The representative of Ukraine in the TCG also expressed surprise of the idea of using peacekeepers for the protection of the observers of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission.
"This is a sheer mockery: peacekeepers must protect peacekeepers. Peacekeeping troops are being introduced in order to protect the population and help end a conflict," he stressed.