The head of the Humanitarian Centre 'Aid + Help' at Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, Oleksandr Pimkin, has written to Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletei asking him to urgently investigate instances of the Aidar battalion stopping the Foundation's humanitarian aid and using it as a shield.
‘On September 24, ten trucks carrying humanitarian aid bound for the towns of Krasnodon and Sverdlovsk in the Luhansk region were stopped at the town of Schastia by the Aidar territorial-defense battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,’ the Centre’s crisis information center said on Friday.
The Aid + Help Centre learned that Aidar soldiers had been using the aid convoy as a protective shield on the grounds of the Luhansk thermal power station in the town of Schastia from a video commentary by the battalion commander Serhiy Melnychuk, on the 112 television channel, according to the letter.
Pimkin has asked Heletei ‘to promptly look into the instances of the aid convoy being stopped and used as a protective shield by members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and to take steps to ensure the trucks are freed and can proceed to deliver aid to the coal miners’ towns of Krasnodon and Sverdlovsk for the purpose of its distribution among civilian population.’
