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No humanitarian corridors created in eastern Ukraine, local leaders say

LUGANSK, June 15, /ITAR-TASS/. No humanitarian corridors have been established in the zone of a military operation by Ukrainian troops in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR), sources from the republic’s press centre told Tass on Sunday.

“We have no information about the existence and functioning of humanitarian corridors on the territory of the LNR,” the press centre said. Earlier, the leader of another self-proclaimed republic in the restive eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, said the same. “No confirmation (about the establishment of humanitarian corridors. It is incorrect to discuss such corridors in conditions of a continuing military operation,” Denis Pushilin said commenting on statements by Ukrainian military officials that a humanitarian corridor had been allegedly created in the zone of the operation. “These are populist statements,” he added.

On Saturday night, headquarters of the punitive operation said the corridor had been opened. “Private cars and commuter buses as well as pedestrians leaving the zone of the operation are already checked at check points,”’ the headquarters press officer, Aleksei Lebed, told 5 TV in Ukraine on Saturday.

On June 10, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko gave instructions to law enforcement agencies to create a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of civilians from the zone of combat operations in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk regions.