Editor's Note: This Kyiv Post+ article is part of the newspaper's
special coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine and the aftermath of
the EuroMaidan Revolution. A longer version of this article was
published in Novoye Vremya on Aug. 12.
Amid
fears of a full-scale Russian invasion disguised as humanitarian
assistance, the Kremlin announced on Aug. 12 that it was sending nearly
300 trucks of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Although the Russian
authorities claimed there was no military cargo in the convoy, soldiers
of the Russian army bragged in their social networks that even the
trucks themselves were military vehicles, hastily repainted white.
A
member of Taman Motorized Rifle Division antiaircraft
unit Semen Borisov wrote on his vKontakte page that 300
military KAMAZ were repainted white for the further transportation to
Ukraine.
“We
loaded humanitarian aid to KAMAZ trucks today,” reads the post. “There
are canned food, baby food, water, medicines, sleeping bags and
electrical generators. There were some 300 military trucks, all were
repainted in white,” Borisov wrote on Aug 12.
His
post said the painting job was done in the past few days. His post was
followed by a dialog where other users asked if the tucks were meant to
go to Ukraine.
The
Kremlin said previously that the convoy of 298 trucks was a part
of the Red Cross mission to relieve a humanitarian disaster in Luhansk
and Donetsk regions of Ukraine. But the Red Cross said there was no such
agreement.
The Ukrainian government said Russians were supposed
to take part in a Red Cross-led mission to Ukraine, but they were not
supposed to provide vehicles. President Petro Poroshenko’s Spokesman
Svyatoslav Tsegolko said that the Red Cross will provide new vehicles
and Russian humanitarian aid will be reloaded onto the new trucks.
Itar
Tass news agency reported that the Russian KAMAZ convoy departed from
the outskirts of Moscow on Aug 12. Former President Leonid Kuchma told
Interfax news agency that the convoy is set to cross the border in
Kharkiv Oblast, but Ukraine’s authorities denied that such an agreement
was reached.
