NEW YORK, August 19 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow expects the delivery of its humanitarian aid to resume in the next few hours but is still waiting for Kiev’s security guarantees for the convoy, Russia’s UN envoy said Tuesday.
“We expect that no one will hinder attempts to resume the delivery of Russian humanitarian aid and that the campaign will restart in the coming hours,” Vitaly Churkin told the UN Security Council meeting.
He added that “the pressing need for the Ukrainian side’s urgent security guarantees for humanitarian personnel still persists.”
All technical questions of delivery of Russian humanitarian aid were settled at the recent meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Russia, Germany, Ukraine and France in Berlin, Churkin said.
Earlier in August, Russia proposed sending an international humanitarian mission to eastern Ukraine with Russian humanitarian aid under the auspices of the ICRC.
On August 17, the first 16 of 280 trucks carrying Russian humanitarian aid arrived at a customs checkpoint on the Ukrainian border, with more expected to follow. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation for Russia, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, Pascal Cuttat, examined the trucks Sunday and said he was satisfied with the condition of the humanitarian cargo.
