A senior pro-Russian separatist leader said Wednesday he could imagine Western troops taking part in monitoring the fragile ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, according to dpa. Andrei Purgin, considered deputy prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, told dpa that he was not principally against German or French troops supporting the current observer mission in the region. "I do not exclude anything, but this needs to be negotiated first," Purgin said in Donetsk, adding that such forces could also be armed. The Defence Ministers of France and Germany have said that they are ready to send drones, possibly with military personnel, to back up the observer mission in eastern Ukraine. Purgin argued that the current mandate for the unarmed observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was not adequate for their mission and needs to be changed. He pointed out that agreements reached with the so-called Ukraine Contact Group last month in Minsk gave the OSCE observers a powerful role in the ceasefire. "Control is more than monitoring and therefore the mandate should be changed," Purgin said. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Tuesday that the number of OSCE observers should be increased to 1,500 and that their mission should be equipped with at least 29 drones. The OSCE has said that it will boost its observer mission in Ukraine from 200 to 500 members. The mission received two of four ordered civilian-operated drones from Austria earlier this week. The situation in the conflict zone remained tense. The Donetsk city council said on Wednesday that three civilians were killed and four injured by artillery fire earlier in the day. At least 331 deaths related to the conflict in eastern Ukraine have been recorded since a ceasefire was reached on September 5, the UN Human Rights Office said. "Further prolongation of this crisis will make the situation untenable for the millions of people whose daily lives have been seriously disrupted," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said.
