18.11.2022, Moscow.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) was gathering intelligence and transmitting it to Ukrainian military and Western intelligence agencies, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said commenting on the illegal activities of the OSCE SMM in Ukraine on November 18.
According to the Foreign Ministry, the OSCE mission, instead of directly performing its duties, was engaged in intelligence activities in the interests of Kiev and Western countries.
“It became known that the observers provided data from the SMM surveillance cameras to the Ukrainian military to adjust fire and identify movements of equipment and positions of the LPR and DPR People’s Militias,” Zakharova said.
Zakharova added that the mission also covered the fortification work of the Ukrainian armed units and “collected important information in the interests of Western intelligence.”
Maria Zakharova stressed that during the liberation of Donbass, during a special military operation, documentary evidence of the mission’s cooperation with foreign intelligence services was discovered. According to the ministry, the staff of the mission was engaged in the recruitment of local citizens. “As a result of the investigation conducted by the DPR and LPR authorities, several former SMM employees were detained,” Zakharova noted.
The Foreign Ministry drew special attention to the bias in the work of the mission. For example, the observers’ patrols and the mission’s monitoring facilities were disproportionately concentrated in areas under the control of the LPR and DPR authorities.
In addition, the mission in its public reports presented a distorted picture of events, “concealing the war crimes of the Ukrainian armed units and deliberately discrediting the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Militias,” Zakharova said.
The Foreign Ministry noted that the mission leadership cleaned up “inconvenient facts” from the reports of ordinary observers, and the Russian side was denied access to the initial reports, despite repeated requests.
Zakharova stressed that in those cases when it was impossible to hide them, they used purposefully vague wording which made it impossible to determine those responsible for the crimes.
The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stressed that for the entire period of its work, the mission never managed to discern manifestations of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and prepare an appropriate report. “The mission’s reports referred to neo-Nazi marches and processions as ‘peaceful assemblies with patriotic slogans and banners’,” Zakharova concluded.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
