Jakarta Globe – AFP, Aug 09, 2014
Senior Ukrainian separatist leader Aleksander Borodai on July 22, 2014. (Reuters Photo/Maxim Zmeyev) |
Ukraine
said it warded off a Russian attempt to send troops across the border under the
guise of a humanitarian mission, fuelling Western fears that Moscow is planning
to invade.
“A huge
convoy moved towards the Ukrainian border, accompanied by Russian troops and
military hardware,” Valeriy Chaliy, deputy head of President Petro Poroshenko’s
office said late Friday in a television interview.
“Supposedly
in consultation with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine,
the humanitarian convoy with ‘peacekeepers’ was meant to enter apparently in
order to provoke a full-scale conflict,” he added.
Chaliy said
the move was averted through diplomatic channels, without going into details.
He added
that the Red Cross denied that Russia had coordinated this alleged humanitarian
column with them.
The West
has long warned that Russia’s build-up of troops on the border with eastern
Ukraine could see Moscow invade its troubled neighbour.
On Friday,
the US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power slammed Russian
proposals of setting up humanitarian corridors to aid people in east Ukraine
caught up in heavy fighting and often left with no power or water.
A
“unilateral intervention by Russia in Ukrainian territory, including one under
the guise of providing humanitarian aid, would be completely unacceptable and
deeply alarming and would be viewed as an invasion of Ukraine,” Power said.
Chaliy said
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin spoke to his Russian counterpart
Sergei Lavrov who assured him that the Russian attempts at the border “will be
stopped.”
On
Saturday, the foreign ministry in Kiev said: “The Ukrainian side has reasonable
grounds to believe that the convoy could be used to further escalate tensions.”
It urged
Moscow “to refrain from any attempt to transfer humanitarian supplies to
Ukraine,” unless agreed to by Kiev.
The West
accuses Russia of supplying fighters and weapons to fuel the insurgency in
eastern Ukraine.
Agence France-Presse
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