OSCE Agrees on Ukraine Observer Mission

[dipsydoodle]

Source: RIA Novosti

VIENNA, March 21 (RIA Novosti) – After days of intense debates, the permanent council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reached an agreement on Friday evening to send a monitoring mission to Ukraine.

A resolution on the mission’s six-month mandate was approved by all 57 OSCE member states.

The mission’s headquarters will be in the capital Kiev. First observer teams are to arrive within the next 24 hours.

Observers will visit nine cities: Dnepropetrovsk in central Ukraine, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv in the east, Kherson and Odessa in the south, Lviv, Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk in the west.

Initially, the mission will comprise 100 observers, but the number may further be enlarged to 500. It is yet unknown who will head the mission, but the OSCE chairman, Didier Burkhalter of Switzerland, is to decide on the matter soon.

Read more: http://en.ria.ru/world/20140322/188647692/OSCE-Agrees-on-Ukraine-Observer-Mission.html

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Russia agrees to monitoring mission in Ukraine.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has been given the go-ahead to send a six-month monitoring mission to Ukraine after Russia joined the 56 other members of the OSCE on Friday in a consensus decision.

“Consensus on the mandate could be reached today due to the readiness of all participating States to continue dialogue and search for compromise even under difficult circumstances,” said the organisation’s chairman, Swiss President Didier Burkhalter, in a statement.

“All sides will benefit from this decision,” he pointed out. “Once more, the OSCE has proven to be a vital framework to foster dialogue, identify common ground, and accomplish meaningful results despite differences.”

“The OSCE and the Swiss Chairmanship”, Burkhalter added, “will continue their efforts to rebuild bridges and find cooperative solutions to the major political and security challenges that Europe is now confronted with.”

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/Russia_agrees_to_monitoring_mission_in_Ukraine.html?cid=38218092

[davidpdx]

1. Good

Get the election in Ukraine done without a hitch and then work on the economy. Even with all the events that have taken this year it could cool things off a bit.

[Igel]

2. Possibly good.

The problem is that now the reporting is one sided, and for most people the information they have is much, much more important than the information they don't have.

Take the Crimean "invasion": Some insisted on ignorance. Aksenov said all the troops were self-defense troops; there was no ironclad evidence that the troops were Russian, even though there was a sea of evidence. One of Putin's little sly jokes on the West, assisted by self-serving fellow-travellers and useful idiots. Putin learned from history on this--the best advocates are those on the other side who really don't want to be bothered or even, for various reasons, want you to win. You don't need to convince the nay-sayers; just let the fellow-travelers and useful idiots keep the opposition from being united until it's too late for anything but annoying bluster.

There's no reporting from the Russian side. What's happening in Crimea? Meh. Nobody cares. Tatars vanish? Meh. Nobody cares. And if reports leak out, well, they're hardly impartial.

But if Ukraine is being monitored, then it's easy to make sure that events to support your take on things happen and get reported by an independent source. What people don't know they think is unimportant; if they're ignorant of something, few want to say, "I don't know enough, I want to find out if there's more going on." Unless they have a vested interest in the decisions take. Most are too lazy to Google a fact or word on an anonymous Internet forum, insisting that somebody else spoon-feed them any fact that might be necessary (even facts that would undermine the claim itself). This kind of critical thinking is much harder for those who insist on completely passivity.

Moreover, Russia feels powerful because it wasn't up to Ukraine, even--other countries effectively gave Russia power over deciding relations between 40+ countries and Ukraine. How cool is that? It doesn't have monitors--and can claim that Ukraine *needs* monitors, the fascist thugs that they are, beating up on Russians and insulting their superiors.