2023-06-08 07:39:44
While Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “shocked” by the lack of humanitarian aid from the United Nations and the Red Cross, Emmanuel Macron announced, this Wednesday, June 7, the dispatch, “in all next few hours”, of “aid to meet the immediate needs” of Ukraine in the face of the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in the south of the country.
In total, more than 5,900 people have been evacuated from the flooded areas said last night the Ukrainian authorities and those of the Russian occupation, which each control a bank of the Dnieper.
Zelensky was “shocked”
“The UN, the United Nations and the representatives of the Red Cross are not there. All these hours they are still not there,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview broadcast by German media Welt TV and Bild.
He said he was “shocked” because “these are the forces that have to be there to save people’s lives”.
Macron sends aid to Ukraine
“France condemns this heinous act which endangers populations,” the French president said on Twitter after a telephone interview with his Ukrainian counterpart. “I was able to tell President Zelensky my solidarity with his people after the attack on the Kakhovka dam,” he added.
The Crisis Center of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs will transport around ten tonnes of emergency humanitarian equipment and goods, the Quai d’Orsay said shortly after in a press release.
The aid includes in particular “water purifiers, family hygiene kits, 500,000 water purification tablets and several storage tanks”, specifies the Quai.
Nearly 5,900 people evacuated from flooded areas
“The evacuation of the population continues in the Kherson region. Our rescuers, police and volunteers have already evacuated 1,894 citizens,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko told television. According to him, 30 localities are flooded, including 10 in the area under the control of Russian forces.
The authorities installed by Moscow have for their part announced that they have evacuated “more than 4,000 people” at this stage.
A NATO-Ukraine meeting
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that he will chair a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Committee on Thursday after the “scandalous” destruction of the Kakhovka dam which caused a humanitarian crisis.
This attack caused “the displacement of thousands of people and caused an ecological disaster in Ukraine”, tweeted Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will participate in this meeting by videoconference, said the head of NATO. Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Jens Stoltenberg had promised “to activate NATO mechanisms in order to provide humanitarian aid”.
UK is cautious
The United Kingdom was cautious about the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, declaring Wednesday through the voice of its Minister of Foreign Affairs to wait “all the elements (of information) available” after having denounced the day before a “war crime
“We will not speak out until we have all the (information) elements available. So we will err on the side of caution on this story,” James Cleverly said in an interview with AFP on the sidelines. a meeting at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
Nord Stream: Ukrainian authorities not involved, assures Zelensky
Ukraine’s president reaffirmed on Wednesday that he was not involved in the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion and did not believe other Ukrainian officials played a role, as several newspapers claimed.
“I didn’t do anything like that, I would never do that,” said the Ukrainian president in an interview broadcast by German media Welt-TV and Bild who asked him about the mystery surrounding the gas pipeline explosion.
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