LUHANSK. July 4 (Interfax) - Employees of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) State Security Ministry have prevented a terror attack on members of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Luhansk, a ministry spokesman told Interfax.
"Employees of the State Security Ministry have prevented a terror attack of the Ukrainian security services on international monitors of the OSCE mission," the spokesman said.
A Ukrainian sabotage-and-reconnaissance team was operating in Luhansk to plot an attack on OSCE SMM monitors for the purpose of blaming the LPR for the crime, he said.
"Details are being ascertained," the spokesman said.
LPR State Security Minister Leonid Pasechnik said, for his part, that the Ukrainian saboteurs were monitoring the routes of OSCE patrols in the republic.
"State security officers found a mine on one of those routes," the minister said.
"Explosive devices presumably planted by the same sabotage group have been found and defused by LPR militiamen before," he said.
In the words of Pasechnik, a participant in the sabotage-and-reconnaissance group may be involved in the explosion of the OSCE SMM vehicle near the village of Pryshyb in the Slovianoserbsk district on April 23.
"A VAZ-2101 vehicle with Vinnitsa region license plates was discovered in a belt of trees near a country road. The examination of the vehicle revealed Ukrainian army insignia and a disabled dashboard camera. Our specialists managed to recover the data," Pasechnik said.
"Materials obtained from the camera evidence preparations to attack members of the OSCE monitoring mission," he said. "Presumably, a group member recorded by the camera was involved in the explosion of the observers' vehicle in the village of Pryshyb in the Slovianoserbsk district of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) on April 23, 2017," Pasechnik said.
The LPR State Security Ministry opened a criminal case after the explosion of the OSCE SMM vehicle in Donbas that killed one monitor and injured another, he said.
"The OSCE chief monitor has been repeatedly asked for information significant for the preliminary investigation and witnesses who could testify. There has been no reply to our inquiries as of yet, which seriously hinders the establishment of the truth in this case," Pasechnik said.