Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

 The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency session to discuss the fragile ceasefire in Ukraine on Feb. 27, a year to the day since Russian troops and pro-Moscow forces began seizing ports and cities on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
      

Russia on Feb. 26 called Western threats of fresh sanctions against Moscow evidence that Washington and Brussels are not interested in the success of a troubled truce in Ukraine.
      

BELGRADE - Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic, in the capacity of the Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), will visit the United States on 23-26 February, where he will take part in the activities of the UN and confer with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on Feb. 19  jointly urged a tattered truce in east Ukraine be restored and condemned breaches in recent days, according to official accounts of a four-way telephone call.
      

The leaders of Russia, Germany and Ukraine have agreed on "concrete measures" to allow OSCE observers to monitor the shaky ceasefire in Ukraine, Berlin announced on Feb. 17.
      

Only 20 out of 200 000 ethnic Bulgarians living in Ukraine have been called up as the partial mobilization is ongoing, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has extended best wishes to the government and people of Serbia on the occasion of the Serbian Statehood Day, noting that unlike in the nineties, the two countries now work together to strengthen democracy, human rights and rule of law.

Ukraine said on Feb. 12 there was no good news yet after 14 hours of tortuous talks between Kiev, Moscow, Berlin and France, as the Kremlin was posing "unacceptable conditions" on ending the 10-month conflict in the ex-Soviet country.
      

VIENNA - Ivica Dacic, the Serbian foreign minister and the current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), has called on all actors of the continuing heavy fighting around Debaltsevo and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the area to refrain from violence and to immediately stop all military activities.

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has called a day of national mourning following a series of rocket attacks in the port city of Mariupol.