Portugal will send generators, heaters and LED lamps to Ukraine as part of the Paris Mechanism for enhanced coordination of international aid, Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho announced on Tuesday in the French capital.
At the”Solidary with Ukraine” conference organised Tuesday in Paris by French President Emmanuel Macron, states created the Paris Mechanism for enhanced coordination of international aid to Ukraine aimed at increasing the efficiency and distribution of aid given on the ground.
“We will contribute to the new coordination mechanism with generators and heaters. We will try to correspond to a new request from President Zelensky, asking for 50 million LED lamps to reduce electricity consumption. Portugal will continue to do its part”, the Portuguese minister said.
Portugal’s government is now identifying local suppliers of generators to send to Ukraine, with 650 heaters ready to go now, 1,000 more per month from February, and LED bulbs that consume less and will help Ukraine save energy.
The minister also recalled Portugal’s pledge of €250 million in aid, an “unprecedented” amount for the Portuguese scale, with an additional €30 million to support Ukrainian refugees arriving in Poland.
The Paris initiative is expected to raise over €400 million in assistance for Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke via video conference and asked the 46 heads of state and representatives in Paris for €800 million so that his country could face the cold winter. This money will be used to buy gas and repair the damage to the energy system by consecutive Russian bombardments.
In total, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid, while 9.3 million need food and shelter. The war has also resulted in the displacement of over 14 million people, of which 6.5 million have been displaced internally, while more than 7.8 million have had to flee to other European countries, which according to the UN, has created Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Since the war started, there have been 6,755 civilian deaths and 10,607 wounded, according to UN estimates the organisation says are far from the real ones.
(Catarina Falcão/Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
