KIEV, August 27. /TASS/. The first humanitarian logistics centre will be set up on the demarcation line in east Ukraine's war-torn Donbas region on Friday, Kiev’s envoy to peace talks on the Ukraine crisis said on Thursday.
"On August 28, a logistics center near the Zaytsevo checkpoint, on the Gorlovka - Artyomovsk highway, will start operating," said Irina Gerashchenko, representing Kiev at talks of the Contact Group’s humanitarian subgroup, which gathered in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Wednesday.
"Residents of the occupied territories will be able to buy fairly priced food products, medicines and other goods there and perform banking transactions," Gerashchenko was quoted by the Ukrainian presidential administration as saying.
Earlier, Pavel Zhebrovsky, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said that a chain of trade canters would appear along the demarcation line in the Donetsk region to sell food, household chemicals and medicines. The centers will also be equipped with bank terminals where pensioners will be able to withdraw their pensions.
The logistics centers will be protected by national guards and the State Border Service, Zhebrovsky said.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has criticised the idea of creating such centres. Donetsk’s parliamentary speaker Andrey Purgin said Kiev’s plans to set up logistics centres from the Kiev-controlled part of the demarcation line had no practical sense in conditions of Ukraine’s blockade of the eastern republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. He noted also that a ceasefire agreement brokered in Minsk, Belarus, in February, did not say a word about any logistics centers.