MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. About 13,856 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes have already been delivered to Ukraine by the Russian side since early March, Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Thursday.

"Since March 2, a total of 13,855.9 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes have already been delivered to Ukraine by Russia. As many as 875 humanitarian operations have been conducted, including ten during the past day in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in the Zaporozhye, Kharkov and Kherson regions. As many as 436.1 tonnes of humanitarian aid were distributed among the civilians," he said.

On Thursday, six humanitarian actions are carried out in the DPR and LPR, as well as in the Kharkov and Kherson regions, in which the population receives 465.5 tonnes of food and essentials, said Mizintsev, who also heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine

He also said that over 22,000 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes have been raised in Russia to be dispatched to Ukraine.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country.