President of the international humanitarian organization Peter Maurer said that a new team of ICRC staff will arrive in Mariupol as soon as safe access to the city becomes possible.
– Our team, along with thousands of other residents, left Mariupol because our employees could not move and work in those specific conditions. But we have prepared humanitarian aid and a new team, which, as soon as there is a possibility of safe access to the city, will arrive and take the place of the employees who left the city, Maurer said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine on March 17.
He clarified that in the context of ongoing hostilities, the ICRC has not yet had the opportunity to expand its activities.
However, according to him, “over time, the organization would like to attend all territories of Ukraine, no matter who controls them”.
Maurer added that new offices and representative offices of the ICRC are not yet opening “due to the unstable situation in the country”.
However, he said that people are sent where there is such an opportunity – to Odessa, for example.
– They live in a hotel. We are adapting to the development of the situation. Now the Red Cross staff is present in Kyiv, Vinnitsa, Odessa, Severodonetsk, Poltava, Dnipro and Kamenetz-Podolsk. Also, some of the representatives, as they have been for the past eight years, are in Donetsk and Lugansk in order to provide for the humanitarian needs of the local population,” Maurer said.
