Tonnes of clothes, medicine and sleeping bags might not reach the protestors on Maidan. The truck sits impounded, with a claim that it did not gothrough customs clearance and the goods have gone to a special warehouse. People from Maidan worry that the aid will be stolen.
Ukraine’s border services are blocking transport with humanitarian aid from Poland. But this truck, with 11 tonnes of warm clothing, sleeping bags, and bandages, went through the border at Dorohusk, and cannot go through custom clearance in Kyiv.
“For the time being it will not be possible to dispense the donations among protestors on Maidan” said priest Stefan Bafrukh from Foundation of the Borderhood Culture, who organized the transportation. He supposes that the government gives guidance to not accept any humanitarian aid.
For some unexplained reason, the goods will be going through customs clearance not under the customs buildings, but at the Foundation warehouse to which the Polish organization has addressed the transport. “The packages with warm clothes were offloaded at the warehouse,” said Andrij Gabrow, who is involved in Maidan self-defense and is in charge of protecting transports from Poland. “This is not an ordinary customs warehouse,” he said.
Gabrow has doubts if the offloaded goods will ever reach people for whom it was sent. Apart from customs clearance, in order to reach the people at Maidan, transport with humanitarian aid has to be accepted by 8 Ukrainian government departments.
Today, opposition deputies are to intervene in this case.
Source: wiadomosci.dzennik.pl
translated by Olga Senkiv
edited by James Hydzik
