Sunday Times 2
Russia wants humanitarian aid ‘bridge’ into Ukraine: report
View(s):MOSCOW, Aug 30 (AFP) -A senior military official said today that Russia wants a “humanitarian bridge” to ferry multiple aid shipments into war-torn areas of eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian servicemen ride in an armoured vehicle near Debaltseve (REUTERS)
Russian authorities, social organisations and businesses “are thinking of organising not one humanitarian convoy, which we have already sent, but a second, third, tenth,” Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov told the state RIA-Novosti news agency in an interview.
“In general, we would like for there to be a normal humanitarian bridge between” Russia and the rebel-held cities of Lugansk and Donetsk where many civilians have been trapped by fighting.
Russia sent a convoy of more than 200 lorries carrying what it said was over 1,800 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Lugansk last weekend without the final approval of Ukrainian authorities and without Red Cross monitors.
Kiev called it an “invasion” and the West upbraided Moscow for violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Russian and Ukrainian authorities are now discussing the dispatch of a second aid convoy.
Ukraine worried that an aid convoy could serve to supply pro-Russian rebels, or worse as a pretext for a Russian invasion if the lorries came under attack, and has been nervous about Moscow trying to increase its role and presence in the region under the cover of humanitarian aims.