The Security Service of Ukraine puts psychological pressure on the captured monitor of the Lugansk People’s Republic Office at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) Andrey Kosyak, trying to force him into giving false evidence, head of the LPR Office at the JCCC Mikhail Filiponenko said.
“We receive information that SBU investigators are putting psychological pressure on the abducted and illegally held Andrey Kosyak,with the view of forcing him to make a self-incriminating statement and confess to the crimes he has not committed,’’ Filiponenko said.
“The fact that Ukraine has not let the Russian consul meet with the detainee as yet, confirms that the SBU is brainwashing him to make him give false evidence,” he said.
“Despite the criticism from the international community and a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Ukraine continues to violate norms of international humanitarian law while trying to put a varnish of legality on its actions by falsifying legal documents and issuing illegal court ruling on the arrest of Andrey Kosyak,” Filiponenko said.
On behalf of the LPR Office at the JCCC he asked the head the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine “to ensure the observation of rights of LPR representative at the JCCC Andrey Kosyak who was abducted by the Ukrainian secret service.”
A Ukrainian army special operations group captured Andrey Kosyak in the Zolotoye security zone on October 13. After Kiev failed to immediately return the observer as the LPR demanded, LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik said that further dialogue with Kiev within the Minsk format made no sense until Ukraine had released Kosyak. The LPR Office at the JCCC stopped contacts with Ukraine and limited a number of movement routes for OSCE monitors. In the course of his visit to Lugansk, deputy chief monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission Mark Etherington promised to thoroughly examine the circumstances behind the capture of the LPR officer by Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian government launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation against Donbass in April 2014. Conflict settlement relies on the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, signed on February 12, 2015 in the Belarussian capital by the Contact Group members and coordinated by the Normandy Four heads of states (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine). The UN Security Council approved the document by Resolution No 2202 of February 17, 2015 and called upon the parties to ensure its implementation.
The document provides for comprehensive ceasefire, withdrawal of all heavy weapons from the contact line, starting a dialog on reconstruction of social and economic ties between Kiev and Donbass. It also envisages carrying out constitutional reform in Ukraine providing for decentralization and adopting permanent legislation on a special status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. *i*s
