Ukraine OKs aid mission in east

Red Cross to lead; supplies set for hard-hit Luhansk region

Ukrainian government soldiers from battalion "Donbass" guard their positions in village Mariinka near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Monday, Aug. 11, 2014. The Red Cross will lead an international humanitarian aid operation into Ukraine’s conflict-stricken province of Luhansk with assistance from Russia, the European Union and the United States, Ukraine said Monday.(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian government soldiers from battalion "Donbass" guard their positions in village Mariinka near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Monday, Aug. 11, 2014. The Red Cross will lead an international humanitarian aid operation into Ukraine’s conflict-stricken province of Luhansk with assistance from Russia, the European Union and the United States, Ukraine said Monday.(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Ukrainian forces Monday zeroed in on rebel strongholds as the government welcomed an international humanitarian relief mission into the rebellious east involving Russia, the United States and the European Union.

The mission will be conducted under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The organization said in a statement it is ready to facilitate the operation with the involvement of all sides concerned after a Russian initiative to provide humanitarian assistance to people in eastern Ukraine.

It wasn't clear when the deliveries would start.

"The practical details of this operation need to be clarified before this initiative can move forward," said Laurent Corbaz, the committee's head of operations for Europe and Central Asia.

Moscow had long urged Kiev to allow the aid delivery, but Ukraine and the West previously had opposed the move, fearing that it could serve as a pretext for sending Russian troops into rebel-held territory.

The Red Cross said it has shared a document with Ukrainian and Russian authorities that stipulates all parties must guarantee the security of its staff during the operation and respect the organization's neutrality.

The aid mission was announced after a conversation between U.S. President Barack Obama and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday.

The White House said that Obama and Poroshenko agreed that "any Russian intervention in Ukraine without the formal, express consent and authorization of the Ukraine government would be unacceptable and a violation of international law."

Shortly before that, Russia had declared that it was dispatching a humanitarian convoy into Ukraine in cooperation with the Red Cross without giving any details. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, later was quoted by Russian news wires as saying that the convoy wouldn't involve military personnel.

Officials in Kiev took pains to specify Monday that the Ukrainian government was behind the humanitarian convoy initiative and that Moscow was only one of several countries involved.

The ministry also laid out specific conditions for the aid shipment, saying it should pass through only checkpoints controlled by the Ukrainian government. At least 60 miles of the long Russian-Ukrainian border is currently in rebel hands.

It said that the aid will be distributed by the Ukrainian authorities in the Luhansk region, one of the two mostly Russian-speaking rebel provinces.

Some of the biggest deprivations to civilians have been seen in Luhansk -- the rebel-held capital of the Luhansk province that had a pre-war population of 420,000. City authorities said Monday that the 250,000 residents remaining have had no electricity or water supplies for nine days.

Food, medicine and fuel are also not being delivered, the Luhansk city government said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the West for its reluctance to support the delivery of Russian aid earlier, but he voiced hope for the success of the mission.

"I hope that our Western partners will not put a spanner in the works," he said.

Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed rebel government in the Donetsk region, said Monday that the insurgents were ready to observe a cease-fire to allow humanitarian aid to pass into Luhansk.

The talk about the relief mission came as fierce fighting continued to rage in the east.

Donetsk City Council spokesman Maxim Rovinsky said a rocket hit a high-security prison Monday, killing at least one inmate and leaving three others severely wounded. In the chaos, 106 prisoners escaped, including some jailed for murder, robbery and rape, he said.

Officials with Ukraine's state penitentiary service said later Monday that 34 prisoners had returned to the jail. It was not immediately possible to verify that claim.

Also Monday, Dutch officials said they will push ahead with both an investigation into the cause of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 disaster and a criminal investigation into those responsible, despite not being able to access the site where the plane went down in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard.

An international mission to recover remains of the victims was called off last week because of danger from ongoing fighting in the region. But the Netherlands' top police commander, Gerard Bouman, told a parliamentary commission Monday that he believes a search of the crash area conducted shortly after the disaster by 800 local Ukrainians was more effective than initial reports suggested.

Dutch forensic experts working on remains flown back to a military base in the Netherlands have so far identified 65 victims and are hoping DNA analysis can help unify and identify remains of most others that are spread across more than 500 separate dossiers.

Information for this article was contributed by Vladimir Isachenkov, John Heilprin and Toby Sterling of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/12/2014

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