The nearest operational task of the OSCE monitoring mission in Eastern Ukraine is to increase the number of international observers to 600 people, said the head of the special OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine Ertugrul Apakan.

first it was claimed that the SMM mandate extended until March 21, 2016. According to Apakan, not ruled out the possibility of increasing the number of observers from 42 countries, which is currently a little more than five hundred, twice, to thousands of people.

"Besides, we have about 300 Ukrainian workers, and about 50-60 specialists. Our immediate objective is an intention to reach 600 people (observers), although the OSCE permanent Council asks us to increase the number of international observers up to 1 thousand people ", - He said on the first day of the week at a press conference in Vienna, noting that currently, the overall complexity in the number of people in the mission reaches 800 people and a growing number of observers will lead To the need to recruit other Ukrainian workers.

"If we have a thousand observers, maybe the number of mission workers will increase to 2 thousand people ", - said Apakan.

He said that the mission must be a minimum of 30, maximum 45 patrolling groups for Donbass and about 60 groups throughout the territory of Ukraine.

sections: Politics