The Russian Foreign Ministry has denied claims from the Ukrainian government they had agreed to the deployment of armed peacekeepers to the Donbass.

Earlier this afternoon the deputy head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration, Konstiantyn Yelisieiev, told Interfax that Russia, in addition to France and Germany, had agreed to their proposal for the introduction of an armed OSCE police mission.

Yelisieiev even said that Kiev has “clear records of all the telephone records” containing the agreements of the members of the ‘Normandy quartet’ to the proposal.

He did however note that “the leaders have not actually discussed details” as this was a task for experts and specialists to review.

The claim was surprising, given that the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, yesterday told Komsomolskaya Pravda that “the Donbass will never go along with this.”

Russia, he said, sought a different approach – to strengthen the existing OSCE monitoring mission by increasing their powers and numbers.

However Russia and their proxy fighters in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions have continued to bar the OSCE access to all but one border crossing throughout the deployment of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM).

And less than an hour after Interfax published Yelisieiev’s comments today, the news agency was told by Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, that “no such agreement has been given,” adding that “Kiev’s strategists are only hindering the cause” with such statements.

Neither the German nor the French governments have so far commented on the claims.

— Pierre Vaux