President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer said that the ICRC plans to send an additional 400-500 people to Nagorno-Karabakh.
In an interview with the RBK newspaper, Maurer said that the Red Cross had radically changed the nature of its humanitarian mission in Karabakh in the past six weeks. According to him, the ICRC realized that "we need to do more" as the conflict was breaking out. Thus, he noted that before the war, the budget of the ICRC mission in the region was 10 million Swiss francs (almost 10.96 million dollars), and in 2021 it will be 45 million Swiss francs (over 49.31 million dollars).
"That is, we will quadruple our presence. We had quite a few people there. Now we plan to send additional 400-500 people to the region. We have already increased our presence in recent days," Maurer said.
The ICRC President added that the Red Cross had offices in Yerevan, Baku and Barda. Now the organization is returning people to Stepanakert.
Earlier, during a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Maurer said the Red Cross intended to strengthen cooperation with Russia on Nagorno-Karabakh. The organization's president added that over the past couple of weeks the ICRC had increased its assistance, especially to internally displaced persons.
Earlier, the heads of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan had adopted a joint declaration on a ceasefire in Karabakh. According to the statement voiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a full ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh will begin on November 10, Azerbaijan and Armenia will stop at their positions as well as exchange prisoners of war. Russian peacekeepers are stationed in Karabakh.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov / TASS
Based on materials from TASS, RIA Novosti