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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Russian humanitarian convoy heads for Donbass

The convoy consists of over 160 trucks from the Noginsk and Donetsk rescue centres, which are taking to the Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk regions over 1.8 thousand tonnes of humanitarian cargo

MOSCOW, 4 March. /TASS/. Humanitarian convoy of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry has left for Donbass, the ministry’s representative Oleg Voronov said on Wednesday.

"The convoy left the Donskoy rescue centre at 04:00 Moscow time and heads for the state border," he said. The convoy consists of over 160 trucks from the Noginsk and Donetsk rescue centres, which are taking to the Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk regions over 1.8 thousand tonnes of humanitarian cargo, where food makes about 90%.

"The humanitarian aid will be divided in two equal parts between the Lugansk and Donetsk regions," the representative said. "The highly qualified drivers had delivered dozens convoys of humanitarian aid worldwide, and several times they had taken relief cargo to Donetsk and Lugansk."

"It has taken less than a week to form up this convoy. The previous one delivered cargo to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and returned on February 27," he said. The assistance, he said, is provided at requests from leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk. "Humanitarian cargo is being delivered to the Rostov region both by trucks and by aviation," he added.

From the Russian side only, about 500 specialists are involved in organisation of the logistics, formation and delivery of cargo to the Rostov region, in the customs and border formalities. "Over 300 people are in the convoy - rescuers-drivers, senior rescuers, psychologists, medical and maintenance specialists." Over 30 organisations of the Emergency Situations Ministry are involved in the work in six federal districts - Southern, Urals, Volga, North-Western, North-Caucasus and Central.

This is the 17th convoy for Donbass. From August, 2014 the ministry delivered to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions over 22,000 tonnes of relief cargo.

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Eastern Ukraine

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