This article will be updated periodically as information comes in. Check back for more details.
On April 23rd, 2017, members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) were traveling along an unpaved secondary road near Pryshyb, in Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)-held territory when their armored vehicle was destroyed by an explosion, most likely a mine. The explosion set the vehicle on fire and killed one member of the team, an American paramedic named Joseph Stone, while also sending the other two observers in the vehicle (from Germany and Czechia) to the hospital.
The area near where the explosion occurred was not demarcated by any signs indicating a minefield, and placement of mines was prohibited under the 19 September 2014 memorandum. In response to the attack, the OSCE has ordered its remaining SMM teams to exercise extreme caution, which has limited their abilities to patrol and observe. In the days that have followed, there has been an increase in the number of ceasefire violations up and down the line of contact, but primarily in the Donetsk region. At least three Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and five wounded in the time since the explosion (as of this writing), and if rumors are to be believed, this may be the precursor to an increase in violence throughout all of east Ukraine. With Eurovision just around the corner, Ukraine is looking to demonstrate its stability to the world (and foreign investors), and Russia will likely do everything in its power to disturb those attempts.
For more information on how Ukraine got into its current position, check out a previous article of ours here.
