With the civilian death toll soaring in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials are setting new conditions for a Russian humanitarian aid convoy that is slowly making its way from Moscow to the border.
The Ukrainian government had initially charged the Red Cross with getting aid into the area, but after Russia confirmed a deal with the Red Cross they started vowing to block the shipments, insisting it was a pretext for invasion.
Now, Ukraine is saying they’ll let the shipments, which were already going to be sent in under the auspices of the Red Cross, into the country, but only after the Ukrainian border troops have inspected all of it.
No Russian troops are to accompany the convoy in, but it will be accompanied by OSCE monitors, and the Red Cross has pressed the Ukrainian military to assure that it will be safe in delivering needed aid to civilians trapped in their eastern invasion.
But the US has to run to the aid of the fictional Yazidi victims. How about the USG reigns in their puppet clown Poroshenko.
Apparently, despite what some people claim is a Red Cross confirmation, the Red Cross is seeming to distance themselves from this "aid" convoy…
ICRC spokeswoman Anastasia Isyuk stressed Thursday that talks between the organization, Ukraine and Russia were continuing, but that she could not confirm where the Russian convoy was headed.
“The plans keep changing, the discussions are going ahead and we will not confirm for sure until we know an agreement has been reached,… The practical details still have to be clarified between the two sides.”
Russia should stop playing nice with the thuggish Western-sponsored Ukrainians, but should invade Ukraine, arrest the puppet Poroshenko, and clean house in Kiev. Enough is enough.
The convoy is a very odd animal indeed. The vehicles, military-type trucks of the same Kamaz model as the Cossack merceneries used in Crimea, carry no registration plates, which is as illegal in Russia as it is everywhere else (that was also true in Crimea). Thus, the identity and ownership of the trucks is deliberately being concealed. Hardly surprising, therefore, that the Ukrainians are suspicious of them. Moreover, if Putin really serious about providing humanitarian aid, he would have flown in supplies to bases near the Ukrainian border and handed over the aid to the Red Cross for distribution. Equally, one would have expected that Putin's first concern would have been to bring aid to the people who had crossed over into Russia, for whom he seems to have done nothing, and leave the people still in Ukraine to other countries who have not violated the Helsinki Final Act by annexing Ukrainian territory. Thus, the convoy is manifestly a scam, but it's not yet clear just what the scam is. In any event, Putin has (once again!) shot himself in the foot by using the plight of the people he claims to be helping to stage a cheap political circus. No Soviet leader ever did anything so stupid!
It is not true that Russia has done nothing for refugees.Europ has done nothing.They just say they don't exist.You seems misinformed.Russia has done a lot helping them with place to stay and has feed them.Russia know that the convoy will be inspected and scanned so they will not put arms in it.Are you saying they are stupid ?
Right. The only way Russia can invade is by sneaking in with an aid convoy. You can't make this crap up!
"The vehicles, military-type trucks of the same Kamaz model as the Cossack merceneries used in Crimea, carry no registration plates, which is as illegal in Russia as it is everywhere else"
Everywhere else in your imagination, that is. In the US, military trucks carry no registration plates.
Russian military vehicles carry registration plates (see Wikipedia) and the same is true elsewhere in Europe. US military vehicles carry an identification number which serves the same puropse as a plate. Where did you get the idea that Putin might be using US military vehicles? Indeed, where did you get the idea that the US military buys trucks from Kamaz?
No, US military vehicles do not carry "an identification number which serves the same purpose as a plate."
Registration plates identify individual vehicles for purposes of owner identification and tax enforcement.
The number on a US military vehicle is a Reporting Unit Code or "RUC." It does not identify the individual vehicle. It simply specifies which military unit that vehicle allegedly belongs to .
I say "allegedly" because hundreds, possibly thousands, of US military vehicles went missing in Saudi Arabia in 1990/91 as units stole them from each other (administrative grabs took most units below their TO&E vehicle allotment and sent them scrambling for transport), painted over the RUCs on their bumpers and painted their own RUCs on (I will neither confirm nor deny that I had anything to do with such activity). By mid-May of 1991 as units were standing down and preparing to return, there was a gigantic — 50-100 acres — "amnesty lot" near Camp 15 at Al Jubail where such stolen vehicles could be left for sorting out, no questions asked.
"Where did you get the idea that Putin might be using US military vehicles? Indeed, where did you get the idea that the US military buys trucks from Kamaz?"
I didn't get either idea. Both of those ideas seem to have sprung full-formed from your very active imagination.
I can add some new information, if I may. There are currently pictures of what purports to be the convoy on the BBC website but they are not the same trucks that we have been shown in pictures and TV footage until now! Instead of the military Kamaz vehices I described above, this convoy is composed of civilian tractor-trailor units (the tractors are also Kamaz) and, as far as I can tell, these trucks have registration plates. Theory: there are two convoys! The real one, these tractor-trailors, which, according to the BBC, have now made contact with the Red Cross in Rostov, probably carrying supplies airlifted to Rostov over the last few days, and the travelling circus we were shown on TV, where the trucks were probably empty!
The use of tractor-trailers makes your theory of mass airlifting of aid cargo even less likely insofar as it jumps the likely load from an already unlikely-to-airlift five tons per vehicle to 13 to 26 tons per vehicle.
Everything is very simple.There is a ministry in Russia called M TSH S ,initials of Ministry of special Situations which is active for many years in many regions of Russia and the world helping people victims of natural and/or other catastrophs.Kiev autorities know that very well.If they are afraid of military help via these trucks,it is stupid because the whole frontier with Russia can be used for passing arms.In this case where you have a lot of official western observers following the convoy,there is no need to pass arms with humanitarian convoy. No need to feed the hystery, even there is or not plates. In Russia if you ever been there you will see that ,all trucks-civil and military must have a plate number and this number is reproduced with paint in the back of the truck in bigger dimension.
“Thus, the convoy is manifestly a scam, but it’s not yet clear just what the scam is. In any event, Putin has (once again!) shot himself in the foot by using the plight of the people he claims to be helping to stage a cheap political circus.”
Oh, right .. like the US launching a much balleyhoo’d humanitarian aid mission to 40,000 stranded Yazidis, which turned out to be a bunch of goat herders that did not need or want any help.
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/08/13/yazidis-werent…
It’s incredible that the US so willingly sets themselves up as such buffoons. You would think there must be a plan, but it remains incredibly well hidden and indecipherable.
What a bunch of maroons.
There is a plan, a cunning plan at that, supply the people with food and water, so cunning that the US decided that it must have ulterior motives to supply weapons! This is probably the same group of people that cannot read an Order of Battle which says Ukraine has FOUR Regiments of Buk Missiles and left one behind in the Eastern Oblasts. Russia didn't have to supply them to the Rebels, Ukraine did when they left them behind! Of Course that doesn't mean that the rebels fired one, Ukraine had three regiments themselves, which one would have suspected would have been waiting for Russian Jets in the area!