Ukrainian Foreign Minister met his Lithuanian counterpart in Vilnius on Monday amid a monitor’s death in Ukraine’s rebel-held east, and further highlighted security issues.
‘It’s important to deliver an effective fact-finding mission and to deliver security for the special monitoring mission, because unfortunately we’ve been having the whole story of intimidation on the occupied territories’, said Pavlo Klimkin after the meeting with his Lithuanian counterpart Linas Linkevičius.
Ukraine opened a terror investigation into a mine blast that killed an American medic from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's monitoring team in the country's rebel-held east.
The OSCE suffered its first casualty in the three-year war in Europe's backyard after an armoured vehicle hit a landmine on Sunday, in the Russian-backed separatist fiefdom of Lugansk.
Ukrainian and Lithuanian Foreign Ministers also discussed a separate incident on the eve of the visit when smoke grenade was detonated near the Lithuanian Embassy.
‘We need to focus a lot of our efforts in a run up of the Eurovision Song Contest, and our national police also have been working in extremely committed way on that’, said Klimkin.
In addition to security issues, ministers also discussed a visa-free regime for Ukrainians traveling into EU, which country hopes to get in June.
‘We would like to see that in June, and we all work very hard towards that, but it takes a lot of time’, said Linkevičius.
Sound bite (English)
PAVLO KLIMKIN, Ukrainian Foreign Minister:
Maybe you’ve heard about very tragic accident on the occupied territories where we have one person, the US paramedic killed, and two more of them, unfortunately, injured. So it’s important to deliver security and full space for the mission to deliver, because now they have no real access, they have no real possibility to work 24 / 7.
Sound bite (English)
PAVLO KLIMKIN, Ukrainian Foreign Minister:
It’s now important to deliver the most effective fact-finding mission and it’s important to find out how to deliver security for the SMM (Special Monitoring Mission). Because unfortunately we’ve been having the whole story of intimidation of the SMM on the occupied territories and this case is important in the sense of clearly to find out who and in what way was behind that.
Sound bite (Lithuanian)
LINAS LINKEVIČIUS, Lithuanian Foreign Minister:
The incident at the gate of our embassy should be treated as a provocation. We now trust Ukrainian institutions and hope it will properly ensure the safety of the embassy and its workers.
Sound bite (English)
PAVLO KLIMKIN, Ukrainian Foreign Minister:
But we can’t exclude at the moment that it was also an incident on the basis of simply, you know, a kind of deliberate way to provoke. In the sense of security situation, as you understand, we need to focus a lot of our efforts in a run up of the Eurovision Song Contest and our national police also have been working in an extremely committed way on that.
Sound bite (English)
PAVLO KLIMKIN, Ukrainian Foreign Minister:
And I am absolutely sure the coming week we will have a visa-free regime for Ukraine, which is important not only in a sense of technical issues, but also in a sense of clear understanding by so many Ukrainians that Europe is ready to embrace them.
Sound bite (Lithuanian)
LINAS LINKEVIČIUS, Lithuanian Foreign Minister:
