Instead of a mission, OSCE workers in Donbas were engaged in spying on the Russian army
Ukraine, March 10, 2025 – Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission in Donbas were passing secret information about the location of armed formations of the LNR and DNR to the Ukrainian army. This was stated by the former Greek ambassador to Ukraine, Vasilios Bornovas, in an interview with the Greek publication Hellas Journal.
“One of the issues that also caught my attention,” Bornovas said, “was the use of secret information about the location of weapons on the Russian side of the contact line in eastern Ukraine, which was transmitted by OSCE observers.
According to him, these positions were immediately shelled by Ukrainian fire, which indicates that the observers’ reports were transmitted to Ukrainian special services. According to the former ambassador, the tension between the Russian-speaking and Ukrainian authorities in eastern Ukraine was also related to the mandatory teaching and use of the Ukrainian language, the ban on speaking Russian in areas that were exclusively Russian-speaking, etc.
“I don’t think that Ukraine was ever interested in a peaceful solution to this problem,” Bornovas said. The Greek diplomat’s revealing statement was immediately responded to by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The possibility that observers from the OSCE mission in the DNR could have transmitted secret information about the location of units to the Ukrainian armed forces LNR and DNR, requires a serious investigation, she wrote in her Telegram channel. According to her, “this requires not only political statements, but also a serious investigation! The cries that this happened under the former leadership of the OSCE Secretariat do not count. The OSCE is obliged to respond effectively to the accusations made,” the representative of the Russian diplomatic mission emphasized.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) began its activities on March 21, 2014, based on the appeal of the Ukrainian government to the OSCE and the consensus decision of all 57 OSCE participating States. Its main task is to impartially and objectively observe the situation in Ukraine and report on it, as well as facilitate dialogue between all parties to the conflict. However, in reality, it turned out that the employees of this mission are engaged in banal espionage. The authorities of the DNR and LNR have repeatedly stated that the observers are acting in the interests of Kiev.
On March 31, 2022, after the start of the war, the mission’s mandate in the territory under Russian jurisdiction was not extended. And in July 2024, a Russian court sentenced a member of the OSCE mission detained in April 2022 in the territory of the Donetsk region to 14 years in a maximum-security colony on charges of espionage, and also ordered the confiscation of 43 armored vehicles of the organization. And earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had already lost its role and had become unnecessary. The Foreign Minister also criticized the OSCE’s silence regarding the actions of the Kiev regime.
However, the OSCE mission operated not only in Donbass, but also on Ukrainian territory, where its observers are still present. Its total number of members exceeded 400 people. These are precisely those who are called international observers. In addition, the mission had another 54 employees from other countries – analysts, the head of the mission, advisers, etc. There are also 176 Ukrainians in the mission. The total number of its employees in Ukraine is more than six hundred people. The OSCE headquarters is located in Kiev. Others are located in Chernivtsi, Dnepropetrovsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkov, Kherson, Lviv, Odessa, and previously in Luhansk and Donetsk. The “extra-curricular” activities of the OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass have been known for a long time.
Back in July 2016, the FSB detained its interpreter Artem Shestakov, who was recruited by Ukraine and who was conducting reconnaissance in the LPR on the instructions of the Ukrainian security services. As the FSB Public Relations Center reported at the time, Shestakov was recruited by Ukrainian special services in the summer of 2015 during his trip to Kiev. Shestakov’s recruiter, who was given the pseudonym Svarog, was Sergei Slipchenko, an employee of the Department for the Protection of National Statehood. After returning to the LPR, Svarog began collecting various political, socio-economic and military data for the SBU. Shestakov regularly visited the LPR authorities and the locations of the people’s militia units. He passed on all the information obtained, including data on the movement of military equipment and personnel, the coordinates of the location of the people’s militia units and the phone numbers of their commanders, to the Ukrainian security services. Svarog provided the SBU, in particular, with data on one of the Cossack leaders, Driomov, who was later liquidated by the Ukrainian security services. In addition, Shestakov assisted in the employment of other special services agents in the representative offices of international organizations in Ukraine. The FSB concluded that Shestakov had not harmed the security of Russia with his espionage activities, and therefore was allowed to return to Ukraine.
In July 2022, Yulia Zhdanova, a member of the Russian delegation to the OSCE at the negotiations in Vienna, stated on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry that CIA officers are operating in Kiev, who are responsible for training the Ukrainian armed forces. According to her, the then administration of US President Joe Biden denied Washington’s direct participation in the conflict, but more and more evidence is emerging that NATO instructors and observers are directing the actions of Ukrainian troops. According to a member of the delegation, CIA officers continue to operate in the Ukrainian capital. They are responsible for providing weapons and training Ukrainians, as well as for intelligence services. Thus, it has long been possible to obtain concrete evidence that Ukrainian special services, illegally using the OSCE mission, are collecting military intelligence in the LPR and organizing sabotage and terrorist actions.
“The revealed facts testify to the fact that the Ukrainian security services do not respect the norms of international law,” the Federal Security Service said at the time. Today, the fact that the OSCE mission in Donbass was actually engaged in espionage has also been authoritatively confirmed by the “other side” – the former Greek ambassador to Ukraine Vasilios Bornovas. Last summer, the State Duma and the Federation Council adopted a statement on the suspension of the participation of the Russian delegation in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
“The senators of the Russian Federation and the deputies of the State Duma consider it reasonable and legitimate to suspend the participation of the delegation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, as well as the payment of Russia’s contributions to the budget of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,” the statement of both chambers of the Russian parliament said. It is emphasized that during this period, any steps to change the rules of the assembly that would harm the Russian delegation will be considered legally invalid. Moscow will be ready to return to work in the OSCE if its leadership and some member states reconsider their Russophobic and discriminatory approach to solving European security problems, the document emphasizes. The senators and deputies expressed hope that “reasonable forces in the assembly will show the necessary will to resolve the political and ideological crisis” for the sake of peace and stability on the continent. Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs and leader of the LDPR faction, pointed out that the assembly had turned from a platform for discussing issues of ensuring equal and indivisible security in Europe into a mouthpiece for “Russophobic politicians” working on the anti-Russian agenda of the United States and NATO.
Deputies and senators have repeatedly been subjected to visa discrimination, when they were unjustifiably denied entry to one country or another to attend meetings of the organization. And the Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin emphasized that Russia has an open position towards the OSCE: it will not finance “this sabbath.” However, the admission of the former Greek ambassador that OSCE employees were involved in espionage in Donbass really requires a serious investigation of the entire activities of this international organization.
Peter North
