Moscow accuses Kiev, EU of hindering Ukraine solution

Moscow, May 19 (IANS) Moscow Monday accused Kiev and the EU of deliberately hindering a solution to the Ukrainian crisis.

"It is just a pretext that (Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Rada) has no time for ratifying the memorandum (about legal base of the OSCE monitoring mission)," Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters following talks with his Slovakian counterpart Miroslav Lajcak.

Lavrov said they were hampering the peace process through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission, Xinhua reported.

Lavron said Kiev might attempt, through delaying the document's ratification, to leave its hands free "for possible provocations", citing a recent detention of two Russian journalists.

Ukrainian troops detained two reporters of a Russian private TV channel near the town of Kramatorsk in the eastern rebellious Donetsk region on Sunday, accusing them of facilitating terrorism. Lavrov has called on the OSCE to assist their release.