A huge Russian convoy allegedly delivering aid to conflict-torn Ukraine will not make it pass the border, Ukraine government officials said on Wednesday.
Nearly 300 trucks left a military base outside Moscow on Tuesday carrying 2,000 tons of what is said to be humanitarian aid for thousands of suffering residents in Ukraine, the BBC reported. But Western and Ukraine officials fear the convoy is really a Russian invasion in disguise.
Ukraine has vowed not to allow the convoy into the country.
"Provocation by a cynical aggressor is not permissible on our territory," Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in Russian on Facebook, the BBC reported.
The trucks, which Russian troops painted white before leaving the base, are currently sitting near Voronezh, about 185 miles from the border with Ukraine. Images from Russian TV stations showed men loading water and baby food into the trucks, The Guardian reported.
Supplies like sugar, medicine and sleeping bags were also claimed to be sent as aid for over 100,000 civilians displaced by months of fighting between pro-Russian separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine.
Throughout the conflict Russia has been accused of backing the Ukraine insurgency which is currently focused in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
A day before the convoy left, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said there was a "high probability" of Russia launching an attack "under the guise of a humanitarian operation."
Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said they reached an agreement with Ukraine officials allowing the convoy to cross the border on the condition it is accompanied by representatives from the Red Cross, the BBC reported.
But Red Cross officials said they have not approved the mission due to security concerns over how the aid is to be administered.
Ukraine may have blocked the convoy, but the separatists who control some 60 miles of the border with Russia could sneak the convoy into the country overnight, according to The Guardian.
