Kiev blocks Russia’s aid convoy
Donetsk – A convoy of 262 Russian military lorries stopped less than 300 kilometres from the border yesterday as diplomatic brinkmanship prolonged uncertainty over whether the Kremlin was bringing urgently needed relief or open war to east Ukraine.
The Russian foreign ministry dismissed as ‘‘absurd’’ suggestions that the 3km convoy, which Moscow insists is a humanitarian mission under the aegis of the Red Cross, ‘‘may be used as a pretext for a Russian armed invasion’’.
However, Ukrainian politicians described the column, which left the Moscow region on Wednesday without Kiev’s knowledge, as a ‘‘cynical’’ provocation. A Red Cross spokesman in Ukraine said the convoy’s route ‘‘is not known’’.
Arseniy Yatseniuk, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, said: ‘‘The level of Russian cynicism knows no bounds. First they send tanks, Grad missiles and bandits who fire on Ukrainians and then they send water and salt.’’
The Ukrainian Government sent its own humanitarian convoy to the besieged rebel-controlled city of Luhansk yesterday.
The number of dead in east Ukraine has risen alarmingly in the past two weeks, according to ‘‘very conservative’’ estimates re- leased by the United Nations’ human rights office yesterday.
A spokeswoman said the overall toll from the four-month conflict has almost doubled to at least 2086.
Kiev and western intelligence agencies have repeatedly accused Russia of supplying fighters and heavy military equipment to the insurgency in east Ukraine.
Several of the rebellion’s most prominent leaders have been Russians. One of them, Igor Strelkov, the main military commander of the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic, was reported wounded in action last night.
Three civilians died in shelling in a southwestern suburb of the city, close to the government’s designated ‘‘humanitarian corridor’’ for fleeing residents. A fighter calling himself ‘‘the Siberian’’ at the last rebel checkpoint on the route, claimed that the neighbourhood had come under fire from howitzers, white phosphorous shells and Ukrainian troops with rifles.
President Vladimir Putin flew into Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in March after a Russian covert military operation, to attend a meeting of the Russian national security council.
He has previously said that humanitarian aid is required in Ukraine because of the ‘‘catastrophic’’ situation in besieged rebel-controlled cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Analysts said that the lorries’ main purpose may be to reassure Russian domestic opinion.
The proportion of Russians who support military intervention in eastern Ukraine dropped from 40 per cent to 26 per cent between June and July, according to the independent Levada Centre polling agency. Support for humanitarian aid has remained constant at about 90 per cent.
The Russian Kamaz lorries arrived in the central Russian city of Voronezh late on Tuesday but failed to depart as expected the next morning amid uncertainty as to their destination.
Svyatoslav Tsigalko, a spokesman for President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, said Russia had rejected a proposal for its aid to be reloaded on to Red Cross lorries at a Ukrainian-controlled crossing.