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Russian aid lorries return back home from Ukraine

Humanitarian mission decides to ignore Kiev obstruction

Hundreds of Russian aid lorries returned home from rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Saturday having delivered their long-delayed aid cargo despite obstruction by the Kiev government.
Russia unilaterally sent hundreds of the lorries through a rebel-held border point on Friday, saying it had lost patience with Ukraine's delaying tactics, a move that Ukraine hysterically described as an "invasion."
But by mid-afternoon all the vehicles had returned to Russia, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe spokesman Paul Picard said in Donetsk.
A Russian emergency official said that 227 vehicles had taken part in the mercy mission.
Ukraine and others including the US, the European Union and Nato had denounced the Russian measure as a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.
In towns and cities recaptured by Ukrainian forces from the rebels, the need for something more long-term than a one-time delivery of food and water is now urgent and evident.
Assistance has been trickling in from the government and international donors, but it is still not sufficient.
Residents in the city of Sloviansk, which endured a weeks-long siege before the rebels were driven out in July, were caught between government forces and the separatists for several months and are now largely left on their own after devastating artillery strikes.
Ukraine has retaken control of much of its eastern territory bordering Russia in the last few weeks, but fierce fighting for the rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Lugansk persists.
In Donetsk, the largest Ukrainian city under rebel control, residents reported artillery strikes throughout Friday night and Saturday.
The mayor's office said six people were killed, including two who had been waiting for a bus and three others in an artillery strike on their block of flats.
Meanwhile, President Petro Poroshenko vowed to triple military spending in the near-bankrupt country, adding 40 billion hryvnia (£2bn) in the next three years.
The Ukrainian Defence Ministry says its existing 2014 budget is £900 million.

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