A Russian aid convoy consisting of nearly 300 white trailer trucks carrying 2,000 tons of supplies for besieged Ukrainians in the eastern province of Luhansk is being blocked by the regime in Kiev. The Guardian in its article, “Russian aid convoy ‘will not be admitted into Ukraine’,” stated:
A Ukrainian security spokesman has said that a humanitarian convoy Russia has dispatched to eastern Ukraine will not be admitted into the country.
The Guardian would also admit:
Thousands of people are said to be short of water, electricity and medical aid because of the fighting. The US president, Barack Obama, has said any Russian intervention without Kiev’s consent would be unacceptable and violate international law.
Despite both the regime in Kiev and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) already having agreed in principle to the aid mission, current dithering now seeks to delay the supplies from reaching desperate civilian populations encircled and bombarded by regime forces. Absent is the howling indignation that was voiced in Syria when Damascus leveled similar restrictions to international aid sent to terrorists now revealed to be Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra franchise and its founding organization, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) currently ravaging both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border in a rampage of unprecedented brutality and scale.
Demanding Aid in Syria, Blocking Aid in Ukraine
The West struck a much different tone when Damascus, not Kiev, was blocking aid being sent across its borders. In the Associated Press article, “Syrian Government ‘Punishing’ Civilians By Blocking Aid: Human Rights Watch,” it stated:
An international rights group said Friday that Syria’s government was obstructing aid to war-torn areas by denying aid agencies permission to use rebel-held border crossings, affecting the lives of some 3 million Syrians living in tough-to-reach places.
Human Rights Watch said Syria only allowed aid organizations to use the one border crossing with Turkey that remains in government hands near the far northern city of Qamishli. The crossing was opened to aid supplies earlier this month.
Kiev has likewise demanded that aid crosses only through regime held border checkpoints. The BBC would report in its article, “Ukraine may block Russian humanitarian aid convoy,” that:
Ukrainian officials have set conditions for receiving Russian aid in the east, after a huge convoy of food and medicine set off from outside Moscow.
Security council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said aid should pass through a government-controlled border post and be accompanied by Red Cross officials.
And while US President Obama claims, “any Russian intervention without Kiev’s consent would be unacceptable and violate international law,” it should be noted that NATO and several Persian Gulf regimes did the “unacceptable,” in violation of “international law,” and sent supplies to terrorist-held territory in Syria without Damascus’ approval.
AP’s article, “Nine aid trucks enter Syria from Turkey without government approval,” stated:
Nine trucks carrying food and other supplies crossed into Syria through a Turkish checkpoint Thursday — the first to do so under a UN resolution authorizing cross-border aid deliveries without Syrian government approval.
The article would also state:
The council unanimously approved a resolution on July 14 authorizing cross-border delivery of aid to Syrians in rebel-held areas without government approval through four crossings — two in Turkey, one in Jordan and one in Iraq.
Despite circumstances in Ukraine favoring the circumvention of Kiev’s approval more so than in Syria where it is now confirmed foreign terrorists, not “Syrian rebels,” were waging war against Damascus, it is unlikely that the United Nations will approve of doing so and will instead back the hypocritical dithering and denial of aid to civilians it itself admits are in desperate need.
The UN’s concerns were reported in a RIA Novosti article titled, “UN Voices Concern About Trapped Civilians in Ukraine, Calls for Political Solution,” which stated:
United Nations is deeply concerned with the situation in eastern Ukraine, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
“Innocent civilians trapped in the fighting continue to lose their lives,” he said Friday.
Ban added that “restoring vital infrastructure, not least for water and sanitation, is essential for a return to normal life” and that “the number of those who are fleeing the area continues to grow.”
UN humanitarian official John Ging said on august 5 at an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, that in Donetsk and Luhansk “the water supply is reduced to a few hours a day. Health supplies are running low, and an estimated 70% of health personnel have fled.”
WW2 in Reverse
Compounding the humanitarian crisis is the fact that Kiev’s punitive operations in eastern Ukraine are headed by literal Nazi militants raised by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry itself. The Azov Battalion is reportedly engaged in combat operations in civilian areas – a group of Nazis admittedly spearheading many of Kiev’s most crucial operations.
The London Telegraph would report in its article titled, “Ukraine crisis: the neo-Nazi brigade fighting pro-Russian separatists,” that:
As Ukraine’s armed forces tighten the noose around pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, the western-backed government in Kiev is throwing militia groups – some openly neo-Nazi – into the front of the battle.
The Azov battalion has the most chilling reputation of all. Last week, it came to the fore as it mounted a bold attack on the rebel redoubt of Donetsk, striking deep into the suburbs of a city under siege.
The article would also admit:
Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming.
The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.
Far from a “fringe group,” Azov was raised by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry itself, its directorates issued by Kiev. Russia attempting to send humanitarian relief to civilians encircled and terrorized by literal Nazis could not be a clearer cut case of a necessary humanitarian intervention and was in fact the underpinnings of the Allies in World War 2. That the West is actively attempting to block such an intervention shows that some of the Allies have clearly shifted ideologically, descending into previously unplumbed depths of human depravity.
Essentially WW2 in reverse – the West finds itself harboring the scourge of Nazism, not confronting it. Russia, as it did decades ago, finds itself once again confronting the horrors of bigotry, racism, and fascism menacing its borders and brutalizing people it considers “subhuman.”
A Win For Russia Regardless
Hypocrisy in the West more breathtaking could not be invented by the Kremlin. Indeed the US will claim that sending humanitarian aid into communities besieged by literal Nazis where the regime in Kiev has intentionally destroyed infrastructure to break the populations’ will is unacceptable and a violation of international law, while sidestepping Damascus in Syria and sending weapons, cash, equipment, and supplies to terrorists now at the center of a regional conflagration.
While the civilians Russian aid is destined for may never receive it, Russia’s attempts to intervene with unarmed convoys of aid instead of airstrikes and terrorist proxies as NATO did in Libya in 2011, exposes once again the astounding hypocrisy of the West and the double standards that constitute the unifying principle of all its says and does on the global stage.
The continued denial of aid will only justify more drastic measures from Moscow, while further undermining the legitimacy of both the regime in Kiev, and its NATO sponsors. While the US claims authority to conduct airstrikes in Iraq, thousands of miles from its own shores in a nation that has no common thread, history, or relevance to America, it denies Russia the right to exhibit concern for a nation directly on its border, for a people who speak Russian, share a common history and culture, and at many points throughout history, shared common borders.
It will only become increasingly difficult for the US to hide what is naked imperialism as it wears down the tenuous pretexts its hides its otherwise illegitimate intentions behind. Russia, as it has continued to do, has committed to a less confrontation strategy. Sending an “invasion” of humanitarian supplies instead of the military invasion NATO has attempted to bait Russia into could not have been a bolder and strategically superior move. The ball is in the West’s court – and the West has decidedly dropped it once again.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
