Today, on March 7, the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, there was held a round table on «Donbass and Russia: New Cooperation Mechanisms», organized by the Committee of Public Support of the Southeast of Ukraine. The event was attended by the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPR, Natalia Nikonorova. 

Speaking with a report on the implementation of the humanitarian program for the reunification of the Donbas people, Natalya Nikonorova noted that at the moment, the hotline and website have already been created and are working. Actually, immediately after the announcement of the hot line numbers, many calls came to the Center for the humanitarian reunification of the Donbas people, not only from the inhabitants of the Donetsk region, but also from Kharkov, Ternopol and Odessa. According to the DPR Foreign Minister, over 50 calls are received daily on the hotline, with the main issues that citizens are interested in - one-time payments to veterans of the Second World War, the provision of medical services and conditions for admission to higher educational institutions of the Donetsk People's Republic. 

The head of the DPR Foreign Ministry drew particular attention to ensuring the environmental safety of Donbass. Natalia Nikonorova emphasized the existence of a great threat of ecological and technological disasters that might occur for reasons, for example, of improper exploitation of production capacities of a number of enterprises located in the Donetsk region. In this regard, there is an objective need for a joint inspection with the participation of representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Measures, public and international organizations that will monitor the safety of environmentally unsafe enterprises located on the territory of Donbass, temporarily under the control of Ukraine.

‘Taking into account that any government should be interested in ensuring safe living conditions and safe environment, we hope that Ukraine will follow the way of implementing international norms and will facilitate the access to critical infrastructure facilities and enterprises. It should be noted that from the OSCE, we have already received support for monitoring the safety of enterprises located on the territory of Donbass (and their necessary infrastructure) through joint inspections as there was expressed interest in the implementation of our humanitarian program, especially in the field of ecology. This program was presented in Minsk, on March 1, at a meeting of groups to resolve the situation in Donbass and immediately received approval from the representative of the OSCE representative, Mr. Frisch,’ noted Natalya Nikonorova.