Guterres arrived in Ukraine to help expand humanitarian aid

“I came to Ukraine after I left Moscow,” the head of the World Health Organization wrote on his Twitter account: “We will continue to work to expand humanitarian aid and evacuate civilians from conflict areas.”

Guterres held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow this Tuesday; And Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

During his meeting with Putin, he explained that his country had not refused to negotiate with Ukraine and hoped to reach peace agreements through diplomatic channels.

“Even though a special military operation is underway, we still believe that agreements can be reached through diplomatic channels. We are negotiating and we will not give up,” Putin told a meeting with the UN chief in the Kremlin.

He also noted that the talks between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators on March 29 in the Turkish city of Istanbul had made very serious progress.

“But unfortunately, after reaching these agreements and expressing our intentions to create favorable conditions for the negotiations to continue, we encountered a provocation in the city of Pucha, with which the Russian military did nothing. With that,” he said.

He recalled that after those events, Kyiv’s position on a new contract changed drastically.

Guterres reiterated to Putin his plan, which was put before Lavrov, to set up a humanitarian liaison body set up by the UN, Russia and Ukraine to organize humanitarian corridors.

“We face a number of situations where Russia announces the creation of a corridor, while Ukraine announces the creation of another corridor. This is a situation that has not been implemented in practice,” he said.

He said the purpose of forming the committee was to ensure that the parties could discuss the situation together so that these routes could be truly effective and that there was no excuse for anyone to avoid forming them.

He said the UN, in conjunction with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was ready to ensure that civilians were evacuated from the city of Mariupol to Russia and Kiev-controlled areas in the directions of their choice.

“It will be a long process, we need to establish a certain kind of cooperation, but it is of interest to us,” he said.

mgt / mml