The EU is setting up humanitarian hubs to help Ukraine in eastern member countries Poland, Romania and Slovakia, and is preparing to tap medical stockpiles to send, it said on Friday.
Additionally, it is providing help for EU countries taking in the more than one million refugees streaming out of the war-wracked country, the European Commission said in a statement. "These hubs will help channel the assistance being delivered from 27 European countries via the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism," it said.
"This illegal and unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine is amounting to a humanitarian catastrophe not seen in decades in Europe," the EU’s commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said. While more than a million refugees have fled from Ukraine to neighbouring countries, "considerably more people are still in need of protection inside Ukraine", he said.
He called for "humanitarian corridors that ensure the free and safe movement of civilians and delivery of humanitarian aid" to be set up. The International Committee of the Red Cross stressed that the Geneva Conventions required warring parties to protect people. "That means sparing the civilian population from military operations. They should also immediately allow safe passage for people fleeing the fighting," ICRC president Peter Maurer said in a statement.
Ukrainian officials on Thursday won agreement from Russian counterparts to set up such corridors. One Russian negotiator in those talks, nationalist lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, said they would be "implemented in the near future" without giving a timeline. Lenarcic said that "it is imperative that civilians are protected and humanitarian workers can do their jobs in safety and without impediments, as obliged by international humanitarian law".
Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council on Friday overwhelmingly voted to create a top-level investigation into violations committed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thirty-two members of the 47-seat council voted to establish the highest-level probe possible into alleged rights violations, in abid to hold perpetrators responsible. Only Russia itself and Eritrea voted against.
The remaining 13 members abstained -- including Moscow’s traditional backers China, Venezuela and Cuba. "I thank all those who voted for the right cause," Ukraine’s ambassador said.
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