“The cities I was in on a mission were wiped off the face of the Earth. My Russian colleagues disappeared. Social networks and methods of communication in the Russian Federation were banned. But I maintain contact with my local Ukrainian colleagues. Recently, my colleague Andrey told me that there were people in his apartment in Donetsk that he did not know”, Delyan Georgiev told “Offensive with Lyubo Ognyanov”.
He was part of the European mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Eastern Ukraine.
He was involved in verifying civilian victims of the conflict. We recall that the OSCE entered Ukraine in March 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.
„Communication between the Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian separatists from the very beginning of the presence of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was carried out through a single control center. It facilitated dialogue between the states. And it continued until the very end of the mission's existence. At the end of 2017, representatives of the Russian Federation decided to withdraw from it. They used the introduction of a biometric passport by the Ukrainian state as a pretext. Despite everything, there were points of contact”, he explained.
„The OSCE mission in which I participated was an observer mission. We were civilians and unarmed. This was adopted in the OSCE Assembly. In recent days, there has been too much talk about peacekeeping forces, not observers. This is under the auspices of the UN. Bulgaria participates in such peacekeeping contingents in Kosovo and Bosnia,” Georgiev added.