MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow calls on sides of the Ukrainian conflict to cease hostilities immediately and start solving humanitarian issues, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Friday.
“We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities by the [conflict] sides and an effective solution to humanitarian problems,” Churkin told the UN Security Council.
Earlier this week, Churkin described the situation in eastern Ukraine as catastrophic at an emergency UN Security Council meeting. Over four million people are trapped in the combat zone in eastern Ukraine, and more than 200,000 of them have no access to water, according to Russia’s UN envoy.
Since mid-April, Kiev has been conducting a military operation targeting eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new government and chose to pursue independence.
According to a report by the mission of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a total of 1,367 people have been killed since the start of the special operation in eastern Ukraine and another 4,087 have been wounded, including 2,589 civilians and 29 children. The operation has also forced 117,000 Ukrainians to flee their homes and cross into neighboring Russia in search of shelter.
