A Sich special volonteer battalion member holds his children on August 26, 2014 during an oath-taking and farewell ceremony in Kiev. (Xinhua/AFP)
KIEV, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday that there is no alternative to the deployment of a full-fledged United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas for settlement of the conflict.
"Our plan is the classic multilateral peacekeeping mission of the 'Blue Helmets' under the auspices of the UN Security Council," Poroshenko was quoted as saying by the Ukrainian government-run Ukrinform news agency.
On Sept. 5, 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would ask the UN Security Council to send peacekeepers to patrol the contact line in Donbas, where the conflict between Ukrainian government troops and pro-independence armed groups has been underway since April 2014.
Meanwhile, Kiev said it would agree to the deployment of the UN patrol only if the troops would be stationed across the whole area controlled by the armed groups, including the Ukrainian-Russian border.
In September 2018, Poroshenko called on the UN to deploy the peacekeeping mission in Donbas.