Switzerland held the OSCE Chairmanship in 2014 – for the second time since it first held the post in 1996. In 2015, Switzerland continues at the helm of the OSCE within the framework of the Troika, which comprises the current Chair, Serbia, the previous year's Chair, Switzerland, and the country that takes over the Chair in the following year, Germany. The purpose of the Troika is to ensure continuity in the OSCE's political priorities.

Of prime important for the OSCE is the need to continue in 2015 its efforts to de-escalate and overcome the crisis in Ukraine. Switzerland remains committed to finding a political solution to the conflict on the basis of the Minsk agreements of September 2014 that were negotiated between the Trilateral Contact Group and representatives of the separatist groups from eastern Ukraine. The Trilateral Contact Group comprises representatives of Ukraine and Russia. Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini of Switzerland continues to work in this body as special envoy of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office.  Switzerland supports the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (SMMU) financially and by seconding experts. The SMMU was established on 21 March 2014 under the Swiss Chairmanship and with the agreement of all OSCE participating States.

The Ukraine crisis has brought to the surface a crisis of confidence among the participating States. For this reason Switzerland attaches great importance to cooperative security and restoring confidence within Europe. In close cooperation with Serbia and Germany, Switzerland set up a group of 15 eminent persons mandated to draw conclusions from the Ukraine crisis and to support the OSCE participating States in conducting an inclusive and constructive dialogue on security in the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian region.

The city of Dnepropetrovsk has to accommodate a big number of refugees, among them many people with chronic diseases, for example chronic kidney failure. Such patients depend on a regular treatment with a hemodialysis machine. This is an artificial kidney removing all the toxic substances normally washed out from the blood by the kidneys and transported to the urine. If the kidneys no longer work normally, this task has to be done by an artificial pumping and filtrating system. For this hemodialysis treatment, the patient has to come to the hemodialysis department of a hospital three times a week for four hours.

Dnepropetrovsk municipal hospital Nr.4 is a big hospital with a well-equipped large hemodialysis station. However, this station is calculated for the normal number of patients in the city and its environments, not for the huge additional workload resulting from the big number of refugees with chronic kidney diseases urgently needing treatment with hemodialysis. After a careful evaluation of the situation together with the specialists of Hospital Nr.4, the Humanitarian Aid Section of the Government of Switzerland decided to donate five Hemodialysis Machines and the necessary material to run the equipment to the Hospital. With these machines, at least 30 patients can be treated and thus be prevented from dying of renal failure. Most of those patients so far could only be dialyzed once or twice per week (instead of three times), which leads to a fast decay of general health.

On June 22, 2015 the five Hemodialysis Machines were handed over by representatives of the Swiss Government to the authorities of Dnepropetrovsk Hospital Nr.4.

The total amount of the current Swiss humanitarian assistance in Dnipropetrovsk hospital No 4 is CHF 200 thousand (or more than 4,5 million Ukrainian hryvnia).