While most of the focus in eastern Ukraine has turned to the status of a Russian humanitarian convoy parked at the border, Ukraine’s military is continuing to escalate its attacks on the city of Luhansk, the eastern-most provincial capital, and one of the last few rebel strongholds.
The rebels continue to talk up counter-offensives, but so far they’ve been on the defensive, while civilians trapped in their last strongholds are coming under more intense targeting.
Shells pound Luhansk regularly, and locals warn that both food and water are increasingly scarce. Electricity is non-existent in much of the city, and the humanitarian crisis gets worse day by day.
It is in the context of these growing humanitarian crises in Luhansk and Donetsk that the Ukrainian government grudgingly agreed to allow the Red Cross to bring aid into the country’s east. Yet the largest convoy of aid, coming out of Russia, remains parked at the border, with Ukraine refusing to allow it into the country, and officials saying it will likely be weeks before that changes, if the aid is allowed in at all.
280 trucks sounds like a lot, but many of the trucks are virtually empty, as the convoy was meant to have excess space in case some of them broke down en route, allowing the goods to be loaded onto what trucks still remained.
The US and other nations, which have been cheering the Ukrainian offensive, have said they are opposed to the Russian aid shipment, and continue to warn Russia against “interfering” with the war.
Ukraine is a basket case and the longer Russia does nothing, the greater is exposed all the fascist corruption of the Western powers. Go for it Putin.
Don't the Ukrainian people have the right to determine the fate of their country?
Absolutely.
Just as the people of Donetsk People's Republic have the right to determine the fate of theirs.
The argument about the trucks breaking down doesn't hold water. If the tractor part of a tractor-trailor unit breaks down, you just hitch the trailor to another tractor. There's no need to tranship the goods inside. A couple of spare tractors in the convoy would have been quite enough. A more likely explanation is that there were two convoys, one of four-wheel military trucks which went as far as Voronezh, where the goods were transhipped into the tractor-trailors. The four-wheelers have a payload of about 7500 kg and the tractor-trailors 20000kg see the Kamaz website). To maintain the scam, the number of tractor-trailors that arrived at the Ukrainian border had to be the same as the four-wheelers that left Moscow. Logically, therefore, the tractor-trailors would be loaded only to about 40% of capacity. The point of such a childish farce is not evident but it certainly has nothing to do with an honest desire to provide humanitarian aid.