OSCE Announces Kidnapping of Its Staff in Donbass

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has announced that several of its staff members have been kidnapped in Donbass. The OSCE stated that it is striving to secure the release of the members of its special monitoring mission who were detained in Ukraine.

“The OSCE is deeply concerned about the detention of several members of its special monitoring mission in Donetsk and Luhansk. The OSCE is utilizing all available options to secure the release of its employees,” the organization said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

At the end of March, Russia blocked the extension of the OSCE mission in Ukraine, and as of April 1, it ceased its operations, which had been conducted in the conflict zone of Donbass since 2014.

Following this, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics banned the OSCE mission's operations and demanded that the organization’s staff leave the territories of the self-proclaimed republics by the end of April. In Luhansk, it was also reported that two OSCE mission staff were detained on suspicion of treason.