Ukraine crisis: ICRC calls on all parties to spare civilians
Fighting has intensified recently in and around Donetsk, resulting in civilian casualties and preventing the ICRC team
in Donetsk from carrying out its humanitarian work.
“We once again call on all parties to refrain from harming civilians and to comply with international humanitarian law,”
said Michel Masson, head of the ICRC delegation in Ukraine. “In particular, we remind them that indiscriminate attacks
are prohibited. We are deeply concerned about the escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine over the past two weeks. The
tragic death of civilians in a bus near Volnovakha in the Donetsk region on 13 January is one of many incidents that
highlight the unacceptable situation in which ordinary people find themselves.”
Harsh winter conditions and the suspension of benefit payments in some parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions are
making the situation even more difficult. The ICRC is distributing food, hygiene items, medical supplies and
construction materials to both residents and displaced persons in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, working in close
cooperation with the Ukrainian Red Cross and the local authorities.
The ICRC is conducting humanitarian visits to people held in places of detention run by the Ukrainian authorities in
Zaporizhia, Odessa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Kiev.
On 15 January, ICRC teams also started to visit people held in prisons in Donetsk, which are not under the control of
the Ukrainian authorities. This is the first time that the ICRC has visited such facilities since it started operations
in Ukraine.
The purpose of the ICRC's detention visits is to monitor the treatment of the detainees and their conditions of
detention, including the availability of food and medication. The ICRC visits people detained in connection with
conflict and violence all over the world.
Between October 2014 and January 2015, the ICRC:
• € € € €delivered more than 2,000 tonnes of aid to areas not controlled by the Ukrainian government in the Donetsk and
Lugansk regions, including food, hygiene items, medical supplies, blankets and tarpaulins;
• € € € €provided food and other items to more than 45,000 people in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, including both
local residents affected by the conflict and displaced people;
• € € € €delivered roofing materials and tools to the municipal authorities, to enable much-needed repairs to public and
residential buildings damaged by shelling;
• € € € €provided wound-dressing materials, surgical items, blood-transfusion sets, insulin, other medicines and other
medical supplies for the treatment of people wounded in the hostilities and of internally displaced persons to 45
hospitals in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, including those in Donetsk and Mariupol;
• € € € €issued vouchers to displaced people in Kharkiv and Mariupol through the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. As of
January 2015, around 35,000 people had received vouchers, each of them worth 200 Ukrainian hryvnas (a little over 15 US
dollars).
• € € € €in Crimea, western Russia, the Northern Caucasus and Belarus, the ICRC has helped Red Cross branches to
distribute supplies, including food parcels and hygiene items, to 60,000 people displaced from Ukraine.
ENDS