DNEPROPETROVSK, UKRAINE - As Ukraine promises to deny entrance to a convoy of nearly 300 Russian trucks carrying what Russia says are aid to civilians in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, the humanitarian situation is worsening in the region's besieged cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
As the Russian convoy nears the border, Ukrainian and Western officials fear that Moscow is planning to exploit a worsening crisis in east Ukraine by cloaking a military mission in the guise of a humanitarian aid convoy.
Meanwhile, shelling by Ukraine forces and armed conflicts with separtists continue in the east, while a quarter-of-a-million people in Luhansk have been without running water and electricity for two weeks. Landline and cell phone communications are now failing.
Luhansk residents say stores are mainly closed, banks are not functioning and pensions and salaries are going unpaid. Medicines are running low and gas is hard to get.
The picture is not dissimilar in Donetsk, residents contacted by phone say.
Most banks have closed their offices after Kyiv authorities ordered financial institutions in the city to be cut off from the national electronic banking system. ATMS are empty and the city center remains mainly deserted with stores closed. Fuel stocks are running out too.
Some districts in Donetsk, which had a population of about a million before the insurgency began, have intermittent power and running water.
However, much of the public transportation system is still working, although buses have to be re-routed because of artillery damage. And the Internet system is largely working.
Still, criticism is mounting of Kyiv authorities from easterners both in Donetsk and Luhansk - and those who have fled - at the absence of any systematic state humanitarian effort.
“There is no strategy,” said Mykola Volynko, head of the Donbas Independent Miners trade union, for either those who remain in the besieged cities or those living in towns now retaken by Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian officials say they have recaptured about three-quarters of the territory once held by the insurgents.
But municipal authorities are being left to fend for themselves, said Volynko and other political and NGO activists. They have formed a coordinating council to try to get the government of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to implement a serious aid effort of their own.
On Monday Ukraine’s security services spokesman Col.. Andriy Lysenko warned that Russia has built up forces once again along the border, saying there are now 45,000 soldiers massed along the frontier, much estimate than NATO’s.
Lysenko on Tuesday told reporters that the Russian convoy bears the hallmarks of a military mission and says it includes soldiers, arguing that, “by all the rules international law humanitarian convoys must not be accompanied by military forces.”
Throughout the conflict in the industrial Donbas region, Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of fomenting the insurgency, aiding the rebels with arms and fighters and of supplying the insurgents with the missile they used to shoot down a Malaysian commercial jet, killing all the passengers and crew.
The Kremlin denies it has provided any assistance to the rebels.
Russian officials insist that they aren’t planning to send troops into territory held by separatist insurgents in a bid to save them from defeat from the Ukrainian army. They say civilian suffering requires aid now.
The tragic humanitarian situation that’s unfolding in the region can’t wait,” said Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.
Speaking on French radio today (Tuesday) French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said “it is necessary to be extremely prudent, because this could be a cover for the Russians to practice a policy of ‘fait accompli.”
Poroshenko on Monday agreed to an “international humanitarian mission for Luhansk under the aegis of the International Committee of the Red Cross with participation of the E.U., Russia, Germany and other partners,” according to Ukraine officials.
Russian news agency ITAR-TASS quoted a Russian Emergencies Ministry spokesman as saying 2,000 tons of supplies - including baby food, medicine and drinking water - left Moscow early Tuesday for the Ukrainian border.
Valeriy Chaly, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, said his government is "not considering" allowing the convoy to enter Ukraine.
He said the Russian aid would be loaded onto vehicles provided by the ICRC, which will be responsible for coordinating and delivering international aid to eastern Ukraine.