Today, on 4 September, the Coordinator of the Humanitarian Centre “Aid + Help” of Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation Rimma Fil has given a press briefing in a press-studio of Segodnya Multimedia. She talked about the progress made towards the key missions of the Centre: evacuating people from the war zone; accommodating the internally displaced people (IDP); supplying the humanitarian aid; and rendering targeted help. In particular, Ms Fil shared how and where the product packages from the first echelon of Rinat Akhmetov’s humanitarian aid drive are distributed. Earlier, we reported that the first echelon with 200,000 product packages weighing over 2,000 tonnes arrived in Mariupol on 22-23 August. 

Rimma Fil: “We have delivered over 150,000 humanitarian aid sets, including 142,000 product packages, to the cities and towns of Donbass. By Monday we’ll have all 200,000 packages delivered. Our volunteers unload and pack the humanitarian help to take it to the areas of compact settlement where displaced people are living, to the liberated cities and to the military operations zone. Altogether our volunteers have distributed over 67,000 humanitarian product sets, among them 63,000 product kits, in 45 cities and towns of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. We are also helping Donetsk – this is the information we haven’t disclosed before for safety reasons. Today, when the residents of Donetsk are receiving our product packages and the hospitals are being supplied with medicine, we can say that Rinat Akhmetov is helping and will help his home city through our Humanitarian Centre. We have provided medicine to a Donetsk-based oncology clinic to help dozens of children. A lack of medicine may result in interruption of treatment and death and reverse the treatment process. Doctors and volunteers were asking us to help children with medicine. The Humanitarian Centre has delivered two batches of medicine from Kramatorsk to Donetsk and children can continue the treatment. Soon we are going to help other children’s care units based in Donetsk.

Our volunteers, including employees of FC Shakhtar, Donbass Arena and Metinvest, have already distributed about 13,000 product kits among the residents of Donetsk. The most vulnerable citizens will receive the same amount of humanitarian aid in the coming week.”

The Humanitarian Centre also helps the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Donetsk by supplying fuel to fill the special vehicles of the Ministry, including ambulances and fire trucks.

Next week the second echelon of Rinat Akhmetov’s humanitarian aid drive will be delivered to Donbass. It weighs 3,500 tonnes and comprises 350,000 kits. Within the next month 40 trucks with products, hygiene kits and baby food will make their way to Donbass on a weekly basis. The first 40 trucks with 80,000 humanitarian aid sets are departing from Dnepropetrovsk to Mariupol on 8 September. Then it will be packed into batches and distributed to the IDP and the most vulnerable social groups – children, disabled people and seniors – living in the hostilities area. Rimma Fil spoke about the problems with evacuation. Last week the Humanitarian Centre started evacuating people from Novoazovsk to the safe area on the Azov Sea coast. Thus, 40 orphans from Mariupol have been accommodated in Krasny Liman. Yesterday the Humanitarian Centre evacuated 45 orphans and children from families in difficult life situations from Mariupol to Novovolynsk. Overall, the Humanitarian Centre has already evacuated 25,505 people, including 10,905 children, some of them from children’s homes and orphanages, and about 5,000 people with disabilities. 

People were mostly evacuated from Donetsk, Makeyevka, Khartsyzsk, Yenakiyevo, Nikitovka, Yelenovka, Gorlovka, Bryanka, Pervomaysk and Stakhanov. As far back as in May, before the Humanitarian Centre was launched, Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine evacuated from Donetsk and Donetsk Oblast foster homes and family-based care homes it had been supporting under “Sirotstvu-Net” adoption programme, as well as women with children and the elderly who wanted to leave Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. 

Most people call the multichannel hotline of the Humanitarian Centre 0 800 50 9001 to ask for evacuation. The Centre considers both group and individual help requests, including evacuation of the elderly, people with disabilities, pregnant women and mothers with newborns. 

Over 6,200 evacuated people, mostly mothers with children, families with many kids and seniors, needed temporary accommodation. The Humanitarian Centre of Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation accommodated them in the regions where SCM Group’s businesses and our partners are located or where the local authorities were ready to assist, including Zaporozhye, Kharkov, Odessa, Nikolayev, Dnepropetrovsk oblasts and the safe areas in Donbass.   

According to Rimma Fil, the main problem now is to place people in heated recreation facilities and resorts. “Autumn has come. However, the camps and recreation facilities, first of all those owned by SCM businesses, are summer resorts designed to work until the cold season. There are much fewer facilities suitable for winter living, although we have found several heated recreation facilities in Chernigov, Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk oblasts. We – the government, volunteers and foundations – have only September left to accommodate the people. In addition, the warfare area is expanding, more and more people are leaving, so we have fewer places for them to stay. We have to find the solution, ask families and friends to provide shelter to people,” says Rimma Fil.    

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The Humanitarian Centre “Aid + Help” of Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation has four key missions: evacuating people from the war zone; accommodating the IDP; supplying the humanitarian aid; and rendering targeted help.

You can contact the Humanitarian Centre at a toll-free multichannel hotline 0 800 50 9001 and at helpdonbass@fdu.org.ua. 

Coordination and Information office,

“Aid + Help” Humanitarian Centre

+38 044 502 52 12