LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik demands liberation of captured officer

LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik has demanded that Kiev liberates the captured JCCC officer Andrey Kosyak and called on the Normandy Four countries to prevent such incidents in future.

"We demand that Ukraine immediately liberate our representative in the JCCC without preconditions and tricks," he said in a statement published Monday evening.

"We call on the Normandy Four countries, guarantors of the Minsk Agreements, to talk some sense into Kiev to avoid such incidents," Pasechnik added.

He expressed disappointment over SMM's inability to document the circumstances of the incident, saying that "it is difficult to explain why SMM monitors arrived at the site an hour and a half later and why do they differentiate in principle between Ukrainian JCCC members, and LPR and DPR members, who are referred to as "armed formations".

The OSCE mission is supposed to react to incidents and report on them, Pasechnik added.

"What were the reasons of the OSCE SMM and the OSCE leadership when they first tried to play down the hostage situation and later, and until this time, failed to provide a single assessment of Kiev's actions", he said.

Ukrainian army's saboteurs captured a representative of the LPR Mission to the JCCC Andrey Kosyak in the Zolotoye security zone on October 13. The Ukrainian delegation in the Contact Group claimed that “the LPR officers at the JCCC were reconnoitring abandoned Ukrainian positions under the guise of a mine clearance operation.”

The LPR demanded that Kiev immediately release Kosyak. LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik said that further dialogue with Kiev within the Minsk format made no sense until the LPR officer is liberated. *t