With Kindest Regards....

"Without the formal, express consent and authorization of the Ukrainian government, any humanitarian intervention would be unacceptable and illegal."
Oana Lungescu, NATO spokeswoman

"We have received a note expressing the Ukrainian side's readiness to accept the aid."
Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister

A Russian convoy said to be carrying humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Photograph: Reuters

And while Russian authorities state that hundreds of white-tarped trucks, sprinkled with the holy water of the Russian Orthodox Church -- presumably to demilitarize them, are packed with two thousand tonnes of cargo -- baby food to portable generators -- a humanitarian gesture of aid compliments of the Kremlin to the beleaguered Russian-speaking secessionists holding out yet in Donetsk, there are those who express their doubts.

Russia, after all, is skilled in saying one thing, doing another; denying involvement in the destabilization of Ukraine and incitement and support and arming of traitorous rebels, yet openly and proudly defying international law by sending in Russian military personnel and equipment to disarm Ukrainian sailors and take their ports and vessels and even the very geography within which they sit, to claim the Crimean Peninsula as their own.

At this very time of critical conflict with Russian-speaking insurgents dedicated to slicing off another key area of the east of the country to hand it as a gift to Moscow, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin -- who refused to allow Chechnya its independence and invaded Georgia, in the process humiliating that one-time ally and impudently granting independence to two of its provinces -- are playing the same old tune in Ukraine.

With the audacity of the powerful, flaunting their strength against the struggling government of a neighbouring country attempting to balance its needs against its strengths and weaknesses, Vladimir Putin prepared to travel to Crimea to hold a meeting of the Russian cabinet and senior lawmakers in their newly-acquired possession. Thumbing nose at Ukraine. To the great acclaim of the Russian population who view Crimea as always Russian, though it had been legally ceded to Ukraine.

Authorities of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Ukraine's government as well, stated their lack of information about the trucks. Its propagandist-humanitarian purpose is clear enough, but its manifest is not. They were provided with no information respecting what the trucks were carrying, nor where they were driving toward other than to present a panoply of grand dimensions; Russia to the rescue!

The convoy of 280 Russian trucks head for south-eastern Ukraine early on Tuesday Photograph: AP

Emphasizing its autonomy, the Ukrainian government, dealing with a neighbour's strident aggression and underhanded stealth operation to impose great loss and suffering on Ukraine -- has insisted it would accept the proffered aid only if it crosses at a government-held border point, the convoy recognized as an international offering and Russia's involvement be extended toward extracting cooperation from the Russian-speaking rebels.

The concern expressed by Ukraine and its Western backers remains; that Moscow may yet manage to embark on a military incursion supporting the separatists under guise of a humanitarian aid mission. It isn't as though from past experience with Russian subterfuge and bullying there is any reason to trust the good word of Russia as an ally in international stability, for it has indelibly proven itself to be anything but.

"We are willing to take over the assistance from Russia and be in charge of the convoy, but we can't without the Ukrainian authorities. What's important is that they decide how it will cross, how it will go further, how the supplies will be stored. We would have to know for sure that the Ukrainian side has checked the cargo and agreed on the contents of it", said Viktoria Zotikova, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Moscow.

Speaking on behalf of the ICRC, Ms. Zotikova said it did not have any information on the whereabouts of the convoy and did not know when or where it would possibly cross the Ukrainian border. The fact simply being that despite Foreign Minister Lavrov's statement of assent by Ukraine, its president, Petro Poroshenko has clarified that Russia rejected its offer for the aid to be reloaded onto a Red Cross convoy.

A spokesman for President Poroshenko offered another avenue for the convoy to enter Ukraine; through a government-controlled border crossing in the Luhansk region; that its contents be checked by border guards, and at that point it could travel to the regional capital, and there Red Cross representatives would commence distribution of the aid. An alternative that has not yet penetrated to assent in Moscow.