Sputnik Delivers Over Three Tons of Humanitarian Aid to Earthquake-Hit Syrians

As our newsroom was writing about the earthquake in Syria all day on February 6, we realized that we couldn't ignore this tragedy. Within a few days, we had sorted out all the formalities, reached an agreement with the Doctor Lisa Foundation and launched a campaign to collect aid for the Syrians. The response was tremendous. Every day we collected two to three tons of humanitarian aid. People would come and bring us boxes of food, clothes, sleeping bags, anything we needed. It was incredible. It was hard to hold back tears when children came and emptied their piggy banks or donated their drawings and toys for Syrian children, when pensioners came with a package of rice, but they wanted to help in some way. We collected 20 tons of humanitarian aid in seven days, including seven tons of debris removal tools, which we will give to the Syrian [Arab Red] Crescent. We have now completed the first part of the humanitarian aid distribution. Soon our cargo will be delivered to Stamo, Ramlel Junubim Al-Hinadi, Qadmus.

"The cargo we brought to Hmeimim contained many medical supplies, including blood substitutes and broad-spectrum antibiotics. We agreed to hand over all the medicines to the Central Clinical Hospital, as they were urgently needed in the intensive care units and helped save several lives today," Zabil Alekperov, head of Russian Red Cross Emergency Response Team in Moscow, said.

"This is the first time I've handed out humanitarian aid - it's a huge job, the consequences of the earthquake are really hard, there are dead and wounded, many people are left homeless. In such a situation any help is extremely important. Thanks to the Avangard Center team, our friends and partners, and simply concerned civilians, we managed to collect over seven tons of aid at the request of the local residents," Avangard Director Daria Borisova explained.