UKRAINE : People get out of their houses after taking shelter in the basement as they heard shelling Saturday. — AFP KIEV, Sep 13 (AP): Ukraine is "still in a state of war" with neighboring Russia despite a cease-fire between the government forces and Moscow-backed rebels in the east, the country's prime minister said Saturday.
Speaking at a conference with politicians and business leaders in Kiev, Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Russian President Vladimir Putin's "goal is to take the entire Ukraine."
"He cannot cope with the idea that Ukraine would be a part of a big EU family. He wants to restore the Soviet Union," Yatsenyuk said.
Meanwhile a convoy of trucks, which Russian news outlets say is filled with almost 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid, rolled across the Russian border and into Ukraine.
Rayan Farukshin, a spokesman for Russia's customs agency, told the Associated Press by phone that the last truck crossed onto Ukrainian soil early Saturday. He could not confirm the number of trucks, but news agency ITAR TASS reported that there were about 200.
In August, Ukrainian officials said that a first convoy of humanitarian aid from Russia would be seen as an invasion of the country, and loudly protested any attempts by Russia to unilaterally bring in the aid. Eventually Russia allowed its trucks to cross into rebel-held territory without the oversight of the International Red Cross, contrary to an agreement signed between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian officials' silence on the second convoy shows how dramatically the mood has shifted in the Kiev government, where President Petro Poroshenko has been at pains to prove that a cease-fire deal, riddled by violations since it was imposed last week, has yielded improvements on the ground in east Ukraine.
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