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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Russia obliged to provide humanitarian and political assistance to east Ukraine — experts

Polled experts agree, that Russia is obliged to extend vast humanitarian, legal, political and diplomatic assistance to Ukraine’s restive Donetsk and Luhansk Regions

© ITAR-TASS/Denis Vyshinsky

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Children’s hospital comes under artillery gun fire in east Ukraine overnight

MOSCOW, May 30. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia is obliged to extend vast humanitarian, legal, political and diplomatic assistance to Ukraine’s restive Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, polled experts say. Moscow has already declared its intention to provide humanitarian assistance to the surviving victims of violence in Ukraine’s Southeast.

Russia will certainly extend humanitarian assistance to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Russian presidential press-secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

“Humanitarian aid will certainly be provided, but I cannot say anything about military assistance. You should go and ask the military about that. Humanitarian assistance will certainly be provided,” Peskov said on the Russian News Service radio.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday addressed the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry with a special note on the subject. It urged measures to ensure the prompt delivery of humanitarian supplies and medicines to the conflict zone in the southeast only to hear refusal and accusations of a propaganda attempt.

In the meantime, a campaign is underway in Moscow to collect humanitarian aide for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“Nobody will be able to prohibit Russian citizens from helping the two republics in the Donbass coalfields,” says the director of the Donetsk-based Center for Political Analysis and Technologies, Sergey Baryshnikov. The situation is reminiscent of Spain in the 1930's, he remarks.

Baryshnikov believes that first and foremost Donbass needs political and diplomatic support, statements by top officials and parliamentary structures.

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Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry turns down humanitarian aid to eastern regions from Russia

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Eastern Ukraine

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