A convoy of 280 Russian trucks reportedly packed with aid headed for eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, but Ukraine said it would deny the mission entry because it has not been certified by the Red Cross and could be a covert military operation.
Russian television and news agencies reported that 2,000 tons of aid was en route to Ukraine, where fighting between pro-Russian separatists and government forces has claimed more than 1,300 lives since April, according to a U.N. report.
NTV showed hundreds of white trucks gathered at a depot outside Moscow, and said they were carrying everything from baby food to sleeping bags.
But Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said the convoy will not be allowed across the border.
“This convoy is not a certified convoy. It is not certified by the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Lysenko said.
Andre Loersch, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross mission in Ukraine, said that while the organisation had reached a general agreement about delivery of humanitarian aid to the region, he had “no information about the content” of the trucks and did not know where they were headed.
“At this stage we have no agreement on this, and it looks like the initiative of the Russian Federation,” he said.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Valeriy Chaly, said Kiev had agreed to an arrangement whereby aid could be transferred across the border and reloaded onto trucks approved by the Red Cross.
Mr. Chaly suggested a suitable transfer point could be between Russia’s Belgorod region and Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which has been spared the major unrest seen further south.
Alexander Drobyshevsky, a spokesman for Russia’s Emergency Ministry that is conducting the mission, told the AP that his organisation had “not yet defined” where the trucks would cross the border. He said it could take several days for them to reach Ukraine.
