Tag: humanitarian convoy

Russian ambassador summoned to UK Foreign Office

Russian Ambassador in Britain Alexander Yakovenko was summoned to the UK Foreign Office for explanations about current events in Ukraine, the spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told ITAR-TASS on Friday.

The meeting is underway, the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile militia in Ukraine’s town of Luhansk said on Friday they have captured a reconnaissance group of National Guard tasked with preparing an attack on the Russian humanitarian aid convoy.

A load of weapons and ammunition was found in a car carrying three saboteurs, the militia headquarters of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic said.

“The weapons and ammunition were hidden in bags of food,” a headquarters representative said.

During an interrogation, the saboteurs said their mission was to plant mines along a local road and attack the Russian convoy delivering humanitarian aid to residents of south-eastern Ukraine.

One of the detainees said the Ukrainian army had sent seven teams of saboteurs to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and that these groups were setting up ambushes on roads leading to militia-controlled areas.

He also said that Ukrainian security officials had instructed them to send the convoy back to the border without killing the Russians accompanying the cargo.

The detainee admitted that the provocation aimed at preventing the supply of food and medicines to the militia-controlled territory.

A search is underway for other Ukrainian saboteurs, the militia headquarters said.

No Russian troops crossed into Ukraine

Russia’s Security Service (FSB) has denied reports that the country’s troops have crossed the border into Ukraine. Border guards have been deployed to provide security near the frontier, but they operate only on the Russian side, the FSB said.

The mobile military teams “operate strictly within the territory of the Russian Federation,” a spokesperson for the FSB Border Guard Service in Rostov region told RT on Friday.

Russia has stepped up security measures on its border with Ukraine as local residents are under constant threat because of “regular cross-border shelling” and an increased number of “mass border crossings” by the Ukrainian military, he explained. For that reason, FSB mobile border guards’ teams have been created.

“When residents report about cross-border shooting and fighting in the frontier zone, these teams are immediately deployed to such areas to provide the safety of the Russian state border and Russian citizens, and also to prevent armed people from crossing into the territory of the Russian Federation,” Sinitsyn said.

Earlier, several foreign news agencies caused quite a stir, reporting that a convoy of Russian military vehicles had crossed into Ukraine overnight.

The reports triggered criticism from NATO and some European states.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen referred to the alleged incident as to “a Russian incursion” that they “saw.”

“Last night we saw a Russian incursion, a crossing of the Ukrainian border,” he said Friday, adding that “it is a clear demonstration of continued Russian involvement in the destabilization of eastern Ukraine.”

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said he was “very alarmed by the reports.”

“Of course the humanitarian convoy itself is a separate issue, but if there any Russian military personnel or vehicles in eastern Ukraine they need to be withdrawn immediately or the consequences could be very serious,” he told reporters in Brussels, where European Union foreign ministers had gathered for an emergency meeting to discuss crises in Ukraine and Iraq.

In an article published by The Guardian, reporter Shaun Walker said he “saw a column of 23 armored personnel carriers, supported by fuel trucks and other logistics vehicles with official Russian military plates, traveling [toward] the border near the Russian town of Donetsk.” Late on Thursday the convoy “crossed into Ukrainian territory,” he said. However, no photographic or video evidence of the incident was presented either in his article or in his Twitter feed. The photograph published with the text was taken on Russian territory.

The Telegraph also reported that “at least 23” Russian vehicles had crossed into Ukraine. The report is accompanied by a video also filmed on Russian territory.

Source: RT