Russian Convoy of 260 Trucks with Supposed Care Aides Supplies for ProRUS Rebel Held Cities of Luhansk & Donetsk in Eastern UA Draws Stern Warning From Ukraine and Stops Short of Border. The convoy of around 260 trucks, mostly military vehicles that had been recently spray-painted white and covered with white tarpaulins, came within miles of the Ukrainian border on Thursday but then halted its advance, turning onto a long dusty road near a Russian military base on the outskirts of the Russian town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. Ukraine and its Western allies have cast a mistrustful eye on the Russian mission from the start, regarding it more as a cynical ploy to help beleaguered rebel forces stave off defeat and thus extend a war that they say the Kremlin itself has covertly stoked, and is the primary cause of the humanitarian crisis that the aid convoy is supposed to relieve. (Refortify, Re-supply the Rebel Separatists to fend-off advancing UA forces that have put a siege cordon around Luhansk + Donetsk?) Those suspicions have deepened with Russia’s latest maneuvering over the convoy, which has led some analysts in Kiev to speculate that Moscow’s objective may not be to deliver arms, something it can already do with ease across a porous border, but to seed the conflict zone with Russian personnel, making it far more difficult for Ukrainian forces to complete an offensive that took on new vigor in late June after President Petro O. Poroshenko ended a unilateral cease-fire. Amid mounting international concern that the convoy could escalate the bloody but relatively confined civil war in eastern Ukraine into a broader conflagration, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, spoke by telephone with his Ukrainian counterpart on Thursday to discuss “practical aspects” of Russia’s aid effort, including security guarantees for the delivery of aid. The Kremlin said earlier this week that the convoy was being sent to Ukraine under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but that organization said on Thursday that it was still waiting for information from Russia about the cargo aboard the trucks. Andre Loersch, spokesman for the Red Cross in Kiev, said an agency representative managed to catch up with the convoy on Thursday near Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and had established direct contact with it for the first time. He added: “We have so far received only general information from the Russian Federation. We need a precise list of all the items and how they are packaged.” A single Red Cross representative, he said, could not possibly examine the more than 260 trucks. The Ukrainian military has made steady progress in recent weeks, with Mr. Lysenko, the military spokesman, asserting on Thursday that territory controlled by the rebels had shrunk to a fifth the size of what it was earlier this year. He also said the rebel leadership faced growing disarray in its ranks, a claim that was bolstered Thursday by the resignation of Igor Strelkov, one of the top separatist leaders, as “defense minister” of a rebel enclave in Donetsk. nytimes/2014/08/15/world/europe/russian-convoy.html?_r=0
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:13:24 +0000
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