Ukraine's president has repeated his call for a full United Nations peacekeeping mission, telling the world body that such a mission should be authorized to patrol Ukraine's border with Russia.
Poroshenko's call came on September 20 in his speech to the UN General Assembly and followed a proposal floated last week by President Vladimir Putin for such a mission.
Putin said on September 14 that UN peacekeepers might be deployed on the contact line separating the sides of the conflict in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. And he said there might be other parts where OSCE monitors could operate parallel to a UN mission.
In his UN speech, Poroshenko said a full-fledged UN peacekeeping operation was welcomed.
"The launch of a peacekeeping operation will enable [Ukraine] to restore justice and not simply cement the occupation," Poroshenko said.
The war in eastern Ukraine erupted in early 2014 following Russia's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. At least 10,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.
