Moscow – Kyiv, December 31 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) – Correspondent "Komsomolskaya Pravda", who went to Donbass with New Year's gifts collected by readers and employees of the newspaper, reports that Russian border guards have stopped allowing cars with private humanitarian aid through. Cars with goods collected by volunteers stand at the Donetsk-Izvarino crossing for days. Journalists had to travel 300 km to Marinovka. According to the author of the report, in the schools, boarding schools and kindergartens of the DPR, where they sent gifts, they did not believe until the very end that they would be delivered.
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“At the border crossing Donetsk (Russia) - Izvarino, where we get to on Monday evening, the first unpleasant surprise awaits us - private humanitarian convoys stand on this side of the border for several days. The Russian side practically does not allow them into Novorossiya at all,” the author describes the situation.
There are a lot of suspicious characters hanging around the Russian border post who are after humanitarian aid. “They walk right there, not embarrassed by anything or anyone, offering their help in crossing the border, demanding part of the cargo in return. Which is then released for commercial sale,” the correspondent writes. – Some are really connected with the militia, others only show off the big names of militia commanders. The logic is simple: if it works, they’ll take part of the cargo; if it doesn’t work, bribes from them are fine.”
But they don’t help either: the border for voluntary providers of aid collected with public money is tightly closed. “According to rumors, some big general from the FSB came to Rostov and scratched all the locals in the tail and mane. Colleagues in misfortune claim that there is only one way: to go to Rostov, contact the Ministry of Emergency Situations so that they make an inventory of the cargo, give it humanitarian status, and then return again to the border with declarations for customs. This way and only this way.”
Probably, in this way Moscow is trying to cut off militia groups that do not obey LPR and DPR officials from any logistical supply, and force them to join the official structures of the republics.
“There was information from someone that they were allowing entry at the Kuibyshevo-Marinovka crossing. The militias also confirm this. We break out and go there. 300 kilometers one way,” the author of the report further writes. But even there, the Ford Transit and Gazelle, loaded to the brim with gifts, have difficulty letting us through: “Finally we get to the crossing. And here it’s a bummer too!”
“But we still crossed the border. I won’t tell you in detail how, but it’s absolutely legal and quite official. Through an official transition,” the report says.
Probably because of this, DPR schools and boarding schools no longer believe in the delivery of the promised assistance from Russia.
“Almost everywhere we planned to come, with whom we established contact, it wasn’t that they weren’t expecting us, but rather, they simply didn’t believe that we would do it. The skepticism in the voices of the interlocutors on the other side was almost unconcealed,” notes the author of the report in KP.