Donbass: SOS
Kiev - Donetsk, June 18 (Navigator, Kirill Boyarin) - Donbass, engulfed in civil war, is in dire need of humanitarian assistance: Kiev has stopped paying pensions, communications have been destroyed by shells, tens of thousands of people have found themselves without water. However, cargo for residents of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, collected in Russia and Belarus, often cannot reach those who are waiting for them, since the humanitarian aid is blocked by the Ukrainian authorities.
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“When we talk about humanitarian assistance, we mean that it is primarily aimed at maintaining the normal life of the civilian population. Now in a number of cities in the Donetsk region there are problems related to water supplies. The water towers there were destroyed during the fighting; therefore, if the million-plus city is left without water, it will be a disaster on a national scale. Based on what I know, in a number of Russian cities and in Belarus, humanitarian aid is being collected, which is intended for residents of the east of the country, but it is still not clear how this help will reach its target audience, since it is not known , how will the Ukrainian authorities, who control the roads along which humanitarian supplies can travel, behave,” says political scientist Denis Denisov, who moved from Donetsk to Kyiv several years ago.
“Help is being provided, but it is being done poorly. Repeated attempts to regulate this process have not yet brought any results. The biggest problems now are in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk; delivering help there is very problematic. There is a very big problem with narcotic drugs for the wounded - they simply don’t exist,” he clarifies. Consultant to the DPR government, political scientist Roman Manekin.
“The Ukrainian government is doing its best to block the creation of humanitarian corridors through which we could receive humanitarian supplies. Nevertheless, what we manage to deliver is help from all regions of Russia. Moreover, we receive a lot of humanitarian aid from France and Greece. From European countries we receive expensive medicines that are simply not available here, but they are extremely necessary. In principle, we are grateful for any help, because now there is a catastrophic shortage of everything,” he told Navigator Roman Lyagin, Minister of Labor and Social Policy of the DPR.
“Slavyansk and Kramatorsk have been without social security for two months now, so humanitarian assistance is very much needed by both the civilian population and the militia. As for Kyiv's help, I don't see it. Maybe someone sends something, but I don’t know about it. Moreover, compared to help from Russia, it would be incomparable. From the Russian Federation they send us food, ammunition, clothing, and medicine. A lot of help is also being collected locally within the Donetsk Republic. The local population helps with things and food. Humanitarian cargo regularly arrives from Russia to Slavyansk. At the same time, Kyiv not only does not provide assistance to civilians, but also shoots at transport delivering humanitarian aid. You have to constantly look for some kind of loopholes to get past checkpoints, and this is very difficult,” notes Miroslav Rudenko, member of the DPR government.
“We collect humanitarian aid on the spot among our people, entrepreneurs, who sometimes give money, medicine, food, things. Of course, any help is important to us - people here don’t have salaries or pensions, so they need everything, even water. Many settlements near Donetsk are without water, even small lakes have been drained. Of course, Russia helps the most – it supplies aid through various organizations. And at this time the Kyiv authorities are killing us. But we don’t expect help from them; on the contrary, they want there not to be a living soul left here,” he says bitterly Natalya Bilotserkovskaya, leader of the Russian Bloc party in the Donetsk region.
“Of course, a lot of help comes to us from large and friendly Russia. This assistance also carries an ideological and political charge. This is a fact that gives our common movement the dynamics without which we could not count on victory. I would like, of course, for this humanitarian assistance to become an overture in the political, diplomatic, and perhaps military direction,” sums up Donetsk political scientist Sergei Baryshnikov.
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