The UN should consider the idea of deployment in Donbas a joint mission of the UN, the EU and the OSCE, where the UN would carry out military/paramilitary functions, the EU — police functions, and the OSCE would be involved in the preparation and conduct of the elections.

Director of military programmes at the Razumkov Centre Mykola Sunhurovskyi expressed his opinion during the roundtable at the Ukrinform “Peacekeeping mission in Donbas: a panacea or stumbling block”.

“Within the framework of the struggle for peace and the UN reform it should be offered a hybrid or joint mission of the UN, the EU and the OSCE, where the UN peacekeepers perform military and paramilitary functions; the EU — police mission to restore the order, including the return of refugees, the restoration of their property rights, the law enforcement agencies, the judicial system; and the OSCE mission would facilitate the preparation of the elections. It would be interesting and useful both for Ukraine, and the international order at the whole”, — the expert said.

The expert noted that before the beginning of the discussions about a peacekeeping mission, “it would be desirable to develop such a full technology of responding or neutralizing the threat we are dealing with, starting from today. It would include military, economic, humanitarian and administrative issues”, — expert said.

M. Sunhurovskyi also pointed out that there are examples of such joint missions — “there is a joint mission of the UN and the African Union to Central African Republic, which has a positive effect”.

At the same time the expert acknowledged that the details would hide great difficulties, as there are different planning and decision-making procedures, in particular in the UN and the EU. “Yes, it is difficult, but this does not mean that it is impossible”, — he said, speaking about the joint mission of the international organizations in Donbas.

As it is known, in 2015 Ukraine officially addressed the UN Security Council and the Council of the EU with the request to deploy an international peace and security operation in Ukraine.

At the moment the idea of deployment of peacekeepers in Donbas is being discussed at the UN Security Council.

The Ukrainian side insists that the mandate of the peacekeepers should cover the entire occupied territories, including the Ukrainian-Russian state border, and the representatives of the state-aggressor (Russia) should not be present in the mission.