LONDON, August 15. /ITAR-TASS/. Western countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are ignoring appeals for help coming from residents of the war-torn south-east of Ukraine, UK media wrote on Friday.
“Concerns over the Russian “humanitarian aid convoy” have plunged the Ukraine crisis to a new low of cynicism and idiocy,” The Times writes. An article by Lily Hyde says that it is necessary to forget the convoy and remember those who need the aid.
The ICRC has been doing a lot to disown the Russian convoy. However, its personnel in Sloviansk where refugees are coming daily are hardly noticeable. “Here in Sloviansk, east Ukraine, Ukrainian volunteers rescue people from besieged cities every day. They find them accommodation in towns recovering from months of occupation. They tirelessly deliver food, bedding and hygiene essentials. No one helps: not the Ukrainian government or the “Donetsk People’s Republic”; not Russia or international aid organizations,” the article says.
Representatives of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also cannot be found there. UNCHR said that the situation in the east of Ukraine was comparable to the developments in Syria, Iraq, DR Congo and South Sudan, the article says.
Insufficient attention is paid to the developments in the south-east of Ukraine, and the reports on the tragic events there are headline news only because of the allegations that the truck convoy pursues some goals connected to the armed conflict.
The article says the political maneuvres were coming to the fore: tomorrow, the world will again focus on the problems of Syria and Iraq, and Ukraine will lose a chance to get international support for those in need of help.
Mary Dejevsky, a columnist for The Independent, writes the West has been neglecting the Ukrainian conflict.
“The diplomatic neglect of Ukraine in recent weeks and months - broken only by the furore over the still unexplained downing of the Malaysian airliner - seems completely unjustifiable. This is a conflict - or to be more accurate, a civil war - being fought in Europe itself, and ultimately for Europe.” “Beside the magnitude of what is already happening, and could yet happen, the international attempts to stave off further catastrophe - at least those that have so far become public - seem paltry indeed,” the article says.
“Compounding the difficulties is the fact, rarely mentioned, that much of the information reaching us comes through the filter of Kiev, which is a party to the conflict. When the rebels proposed a ceasefire, their offer was immediately rejected by Kiev as a ploy (when it may rather have been the first hint of a white flag),” the publication says.
“If London, Brussels and Washington applied the same energy to Ukraine as they are applying to the greater Middle East, the worst - a new war, cold or hot, with Russia - might still be avoided. Amid so much misunderstanding on both sides, however, it is hard to be optimistic,” writes Dejevsky.