MOSCOW. Sept 1 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and he had agreed during their recent meeting on implementing a humanitarian aid plan for Luhansk and Donetsk residents using railroad transport.
"We have agreed that we will implement the plan proposed by President Poroshenko to help people in need in Luhansk and Donetsk and will follow a path he proposed: we will ship food and other essential goods by rail. This was his proposal and I agreed with it," Putin said in an interview with Channel One television, a fragment of which was aired on Friday evening.
The meeting was honest, Putin said.
"In general, it seemed to me the meeting was very good, quite honest. In my point of view, Petro Oleksiyovych is a partner with whom dialogue can be held," the Russian president said.
"Of course, it would be good if everything we agreed upon should be implemented," Putin said.
"It is necessary to provide humanitarian assistance to people who are in the conflict zone now. We talked with President Poroshenko about this as well, and he treats with understanding what Russia is doing. I suppose we should meet the Ukrainian authorities halfway in this regard," Putin said.
Putin said he hoped Poroshenko has heard Moscow's arguments.
Putin and Poroshenko had met one-on-one in Minsk late on August 26, after a meeting between the leaders of the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union member-states, the Ukrainian president, and EU representatives.
Following that meeting, Putin told journalists that agreements had been reached on providing humanitarian aid to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "We talked about the need to provide humanitarian aid to Donetsk and Luhansk. We agreed on how we will interact," he said.
"We talked about our concerns regarding the humanitarian element," Putin said. "Frankly speaking, President Poroshenko doesn't deny that the situation is difficult. It can't be described other than disastrous," he said.
Anatoly Makarenko, a deputy chief of the Ukrainian State Fiscal Service, had said earlier on Friday that the second Russian humanitarian convoy bound for the east of Ukraine could be sent by rail through the Gukovo checkpoint in the next ten days, provided Russia and Ukraine have agreed all necessary procedures.
"The Russian Foreign Ministry sent a note to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, notifying us of Russia's preparation of another humanitarian convoy. Russia suggested rail transport as a possibility. So now we are going through all possible options for working with this humanitarian convoy. The main condition set by the Ukrainian State Fiscal Service's customs office is that the recipient should be the Red Cross, as agreed," Makarenko told reporters on Friday.
"For now, we are working on the checkpoint: if it goes by rail, it will be through the Gukovo checkpoint, within 30 kilometers of Izvaryne. We have a group of border guards and customs officers deployed there, and we are ready to have the train cleared by this group. Judging by the dynamic, I think all this will already be in place in the next ten days," Makarenko said.