MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/. Representatives of international organizations who visited Russian regions bordering the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have not found any evidence whatsoever that evacuations from Donbass to Russia were being carried out forcibly, Russian Red Cross (RRC) Chairman Pavel Savchuk said in an interview with TASS.
According to him, his colleagues from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies "have the opportunity to see and hear everything for themselves." "We actively cooperate with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. For example, our employees now visited the Voronezh and Belgorod Regions with a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Next week they will go to the Kaluga Region," Savchuk said.
"Such trips have, on the one hand, a monitoring function which aims to assess the requests that exist. On the other hand, to make sure once again that there are no forced evacuations, these questions are asked by colleagues from international organizations every time. So far we have not found any confirmation of these facts," the Russian Red Cross chairman added.
According to Savchuk, the Russian Red Cross "does not carry out any special information work in this matter." "Our task is to speak honestly and frankly about the processes that take place. As arguments, we talk about our experience of visiting temporary shelters and communicating with refugees," he explained.