Mary Akopian: Ukraine intends to join the EU Civil Protection Mechanism
Today, November 10, the Military Media Center hosted an online briefing by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Mary Akopian. The official spoke about the international assistance and support of partners in Ukraine's fight against the armed aggression of the Russian Federation.
Over the past 8 months, the approach to the formation of the needs of the components of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with which Ukraine goes to its international partners has changed. Currently, they are being worked out more pointwise, taking into account the current situation.
Mary Akopian gave numerous examples of this approach to practical cooperation with foreign donors. In particular, the recent tranche of SNS assistance from the UK included 9 fire and rescue vehicles and fire rescue equipment, including grinders, a mine search kit, generators, hydraulic tools, pumps, ladders, etc.
“In total, since the beginning of the war, rescuers have received from the British about 70 units of fire and rescue equipment and a large amount of fire and rescue equipment. France's contribution in this sense is 76 units of fire and rescue and medical vehicles, and other equipment totalling 8.54 million euros,” said the deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is important to help not only individual states, but also international institutions. For example, during a recent visit, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Janez Lenarchich delivered 55 humanitarian aid carts for the most diverse needs of Ukrainians in wartime, in particular to restore life in the de-occupied territories and support Ukrainians in the winter.
“Only a partial list of the entire donation from the EU to the Ministry of the Interior is contained in almost 500 pages of a special register with millions of names and tens of thousands of tons of aid,” Mary Akopian outlined the scale of the partnership assistance provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
For example, 785 fire and rescue and special vehicles, 42 railway cars and 3 planes with humanitarian aid were received from foreign partners for the State Emergency Service.
Also, large-scale assistance, including unique modern equipment, scarce reagents, advanced technologies, is provided to Ukraine by our friends in such areas as humanitarian demining, investigation of military and international crimes, in particular DNA expertise, identification of dead military and civilians, the need to strengthen borders, medical evacuation and psychological support.
In addition, Mary Akopian spoke about the reorientation and reformat of all projects and programs launched before the full-scale invasion. In addition, she informed about the strategic results of the partnership. In particular, in the context of the demining of the territory of Ukraine, which can take up to 7 years or more, the US State Department announced the provision of financial assistance - almost 90 million US dollars - precisely to solve this humanitarian problem. Thanks to this assistance, it is planned to attract 100 demining groups and support a large-scale project to develop a professional center for training and equipping all specialists engaged in mining of Ukrainian territories.
“For the first time in history, we are joining the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, the world's largest system of international coordinated operational assistance. With its help, 70 thousand tons of various aid have already been delivered to our country. We hope that by the end of this year we will join this Mechanism, which will give us many additional advantages,” the Deputy Minister said.
Finally, Mary Akopian stressed the readiness of the department to share Ukrainian standards of service with international partners and called on them to continue to support our services so that Ukraine can fight the enemy sustainably and qualitatively.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
