Austria Gives Over $2Mln in Additional Aid to Eastern Ukraine

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Austria has decided to provide an additional 2 million euros ($2.1 million) in humanitarian aid to the residents of war-torn eastern Ukraine, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said Wednesday.

"Austria provides additional 2 million € for humanitarian aid to the people in eastern #Ukraine," Kurz said on his official Twitter account.

​The comment comes as the minister, who chairs the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) after assuming to post on January 1, travels across eastern Ukraine accompanied by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. The two officials travelled to Mariupol earlier on Wednesday, visiting a charity and a water filtration plant.

The eastern part of Ukraine has been in turmoil since April 2014, when Kiev authorities launched a military operation against pro-independence militia in Donbass. In February 2015, the two sides reached a ceasefire deal after talks brokered by the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in Minsk. A OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) has been operation in the region to oversee the ceasefire and the implementation of the agreement.

The deal stipulates a full ceasefire, weapons withdrawal from the line of contact in eastern Ukraine, an all-for-all prisoner exchange and constitutional reforms, which would give a special status to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics. Both sides of the conflict, however, have been constantly accusing each other of violations of the agreement.