VORONEZH, August 13 (RIA Novosti) -A convoy of 280 white Kamaz trucks carrying humanitarian aid to southeastern Ukraine is on its way from Russia’s Voronezh to Belgorod, which is under 40 km (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
Late Tuesday night, after many hours on the road, the almost three-kilometer-long convoy of trucks arrived in Voronezh from Naro-Fominsk in Moscow Region. Roads in the center of the city were partially closed to make way for the aid-loaded trucks.
Truck drivers and journalists were accommodated in one of the city’s military units, preparing to leave at dawn.
It has not yet been established whether a humanitarian corridor for the Russian convoy carrying medical supplies, food, baby foods, sleeping-bags and other basic necessities to Ukraine will be opened.
Earlier Russia officially addressed the UN humanitarian agencies, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with a call to organize an international humanitarian mission to Ukraine. Last week, Russia urged the UN Security Council to send a mission with Russian humanitarian aid to eastern Ukraine under the auspice and accompanied by ICRC representatives.
The proposal was backed by the ICRC, and on August 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia had reached an agreement with Kiev and the Red Cross on sending a humanitarian mission to violence-plagued eastern Ukraine, while expressing hope that the West will not impede it.
