AA18CR04ADD1

AS (2018) CR 04
Addendum 1

2018 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(First part)

REPORT

Fourth sitting

Tuesday 23 January 2018 at 3.30 p.m.

Debate:

 Humanitarian consequences of the war in Ukraine

The following texts were submitted for inclusion in the official report by members who were present in the Chamber but were prevented by lack of time from delivering them.

Mr HOWELL (United Kingdom) – I have great sympathy with the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. War is always terrible and produces casualties. This report rightly draws our attention to the number of displaced people involved in this war. That needs to be set into the context that in the world today there are some 65 million displaced people, and what is appropriate for a million is not appropriate for 65 million. The starting point has to be to end the causes of the displacement of people. That means an end to the Russian occupation of Crimea and the Donbass. It is very sad that so little progress has been made in this direction. I urge the Ukrainians to ensure that they are whiter than white when it comes to the issues covered by this report, including those actions by supporters in the region at war.

The report calls for housing, but the simple fact is that people will want to return to the areas in which they lived and grew up. It also calls for a humanitarian conference which, given Russian attitudes, is going to be difficult to arrange. We have to acknowledge who is the aggressor here and, as the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers said earlier, give our support to Ukraine.

Mr THÓRARINSSON (Iceland) – I express my thanks for this report, which is an informative and important document.

The humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine is the worst in three years and it is deteriorating. This grave situation must be dealt with by the international community, and as the Secretary General said in his speech yesterday, the Council of Europe must deploy all its instruments to mitigate the suffering of innocent people in eastern Ukraine and to put an end to the Russian occupation.  

It is imperative that international aid agencies are granted access to the occupied areas immediately.
If you speak to journalists who travel to the war zone regularly, they all tell the same story: the Russian Federation has been blocking every possible effort to make this war less painful for civilians. It is a fact that the Russian authorities do not allow any humanitarian aid into the area, except from the Russian Federation. But humanitarian aid from the Russian Federation is not aid, because they sell it to the locals, and they use the opportunity to smuggle weapons to the terrorists. 

This war is not only an invasion of a sovereign European country; it is also full of propaganda and fake news. The Russians try to convince the people who are suffering because of them that nobody cares about them except the Russians. The United Nations has criticised the Ukrainian Government for withdrawing public financing for people living in those areas, which has made people more dependent on humanitarian aid. Pro-Russian media called this a genocide; this is fake news at its worst. The truth is that the mafia in the Russian Federation and Ukraine have been making money off financial aid, by faking IDs. The aid was given to people who do not even exist.