Geneva (EFE).- United Nations agencies today launched a response plan to the humanitarian needs of Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, through which they request the international community 5,600 million dollars in order to assist in 2023 to 15 3 million Ukrainians.
The plan was presented today at a press conference in Geneva by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, and by the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, who underlined the growing needs of the European country.
Of the total amount, 3.9 billion dollars will be managed by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs directed by Griffiths, and the remaining 1.7 billion will go to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which with them hopes to care for 4 2 million Ukrainians who have fled to other European countries.
The United Nations estimates that the population in Ukraine has fallen from 43.3 to 35.6 million people because of the war, and that some 21.8 million Ukrainians inside and outside the country need humanitarian aid, so the plan response seeks to assist at least two thirds of this group.
Sanctions such as “arsenic-based poison”
For her part, the President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, also announced this Wednesday that the tenth package of sanctions against Russia that the European Union (EU) wants to approve coinciding with the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine will be worth 11 billion euros.
The sanctions the EU is discussing include restrictions on the export of “multiple electronic components” needed in Russia’s weapons systems, such as drones, missiles and helicopters.
The EC has also proposed sanctioning the Iranian companies linked to the Revolutionary Guard that manufacture the drones that Tehran is giving to Moscow to bomb Ukraine.
“It is our duty to sanction them,” said Von der Leyen in a speech in the European Parliament on the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, which will take place on February 24.
In the same scenario, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, has assured that the sanctions against Russia are “a slow-acting poison” made “based on arsenic” with “irreversible” effects for Moscow.
The head of European diplomacy has acknowledged that the economic reprisals undertaken so far have not had the desired effect and that the Kremlin had “exceptionally high income” last year, derived from the sale of gas and oil, but has pointed out said that “things are changing, thanks to our sanctions and in particular” the cap on the price of Russian oil that the EU has agreed with the G7.
Borrell has been convinced that the Russian economy “is going to pay a very high price for this war” and has insisted on continuing to support Ukraine militarily because “the war is going to be decided this spring and summer.”
