Angela Merkel heads to Kyiv as some Russian aid trucks begin to leave Ukraine
“It is an undeniable and blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty,”
Mr Lyall Grant said.
“It has nothing to do with humanitarianism. That humanitarian effort is
being coordinated by the U.N. and if the Russia federation wanted to
participate in that, it could have done so in a collective way rather than
acting unilaterally.”
Mr Lyall Grant said “there was no unanimity of views” during the
emergency consultations, which were held at the request of Lithuania.
Paul Picard, the acting head of the mission observing the Russian border post
known as Donetsk, told AFP that some of the vehicles had begun passing
through but could not provide a number. Russian news agencies reported that
several dozen had arrived at the border.
He said six groups of vehicles were expected to cross back.
After waiting on the Russian side of the border for a week as Moscow, Kyiv and
the International Committee of the Red Cross tried to come to agreement on
the convoy’s passage, the lorries rolled across the border Friday without
Ukrainian permission or Red Cross monitors.
OSCE monitors counted only 227 vehicles as having crossed the border in six
groups, according to a statement published on Friday, while Russia had
previously said there were 280 lorries in the convoy.
Russia had previously let journalists look inside a handful of the lorries,
which it said were carrying around 1,800 tonnes of aid including food,
water, medicine and electrical generators.
The lorries unloaded their cargo in rebel-held Lugansk late on Friday,
according to Russian state television.
The convoy of some 260 trucks drove Friday into Ukraine, headed for Luhansk, a
city in eastern Ukraine hard-hit by weeks of fighting between Ukrainian
forces and pro-Russian rebels.
The Ukrainian government and Western countries said they suspected that the
convoy could be used by Russia to smuggle supplies and reinforcements for
rebel fighters.
The European Union and the United States both called for Moscow to pull out
the trucks immediately or face further isolation as they drove cross-border
tensions to a new high ahead of an already tricky visit to Kyiv for the
German leader.
German chancellor Angela Merkel will have to tread a fine line in Ukraine,
showing firm support for Kyiv’s pro-Western leaders while also pushing for
them to halt their increasingly successful – but brutal – offensive.
Ms Merkel, the most influential Western leader to visit Ukraine’s pro-Western
leaders, will hold talks with President Petro Poroshenko, three days ahead
of the first meeting in months between Mr Poroshenko and Russian President
Vladimir Putin in Minsk alongside top EU officials.
In an interview to be published in full tomorrow, Germany’s vice chancellor,
Sigmar Gabriel, said establishing a federal Ukraine would be the only viable
solution to the crisis pitting Kyiv against pro-Russian separatists.
“The wise concept of federalism seems to me the only viable path,”
the vice chancellor and economic and energy affairs minister said in an
interview to appear Sunday in the German weekly Welt am Sonntag.
The paper released extracts of the interview just hours before German
Chancellor Angela Merkel was set to meet Ukrainian officials in Kyiv for
crisis talks.
In Donetsk, two civilians were killed on Saturday apparently by artillery fire
in Donetsk, the main separatist stronghold in eastern Ukraine, an AFP
reporter witnessed.
Their bodies were seen covered with bloodied sheets in a street of central
Donetsk after artillery explosions rocked the city around 6am (3am GMT).