MOSCOW, August 19./ITAR-TASS/. Another round of talks in Berlin by the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine on how to stabilize the situation in the east of Ukraine has ended inconclusively.
The bloody civil war in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is raging on as before. People die, homes go up in flames and industries are churned to rubble, in many cases with the risk of dire environmental effects. Many cities and villages of this coalmining area have plunged into a humanitarian disaster - no running water, power supply lines are dead, the sewage is out of order, the shelves of food supermarkets are getting empty and women, children and elderly people have no chance at all to flee to safety from their districts coming under rocket fire.
In the meantime, a convoy of hundreds of Russian trucks carrying humanitarian aid is stalled on the Ukrainian border. Kiev has resorted to no end of the most exquisite bureaucratic gimmicks to keep it out of the country as long as possible. Refusal to provide security guarantees for the International Red Cross officials who are expected to accompany the convoy is the latest.