A total of 41 Bosnian citizens are currently in Ukraine’s Donbas region employed by the OSCE mission to that country, and as such, Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot tell them to return home, as they are individually employed by that organization, Sinisa Bencun, Bosnia’s OSCE Mission Ambassador in Vienna.

Bencun said that 57 people from Bosnia were engaged in the OSCE mission in Ukraine.

“Of which 41 are currently on the ground in Ukraine, while the rest are outside Ukraine due to vacations and other private activities. Internally we have figures on the schedule of BiH citizens in certain regions so that we cannot communicate publicly where they are. On this occasion, I can only say that most of them are currently located in the eastern regions of Ukraine, that is, in Donetsk and Luhansk,” he said.
The Ambassador emphasized that BiH citizens in the OSCE in Ukraine are not an official state-contingent as other states have.

“Which means that BiH has no obligations towards them stemming from their employment relationship. They are self-employed in the OSCE and the state doesn’t have the possibility of their withdrawal as some countries such as the US, UK, Denmark and Canada have done. The state can only give recommendations in terms of their stay in Ukraine, and it is up to the people themselves to decide on this individually, taking into account the security and other guarantees given to them by the OSCE as an employer,” Bencun noted.

He pointed out that the decisions of some countries to withdraw staff from the OSCE in recent days were made not only for security but also for certain political reasons.