It is a boat loaded with solidarity which cast off shortly after 5 p.m. from Marseille. More than a thousand tonnes of humanitarian aid left for Romania on Wednesday to help the war-ravaged Ukrainian territories get through the winter. Aboard the Aknoul, a ro-ro ship commanded by a Ukrainian captain, were loaded with civil security equipment (fire vehicles), removable bridges, generators, 25 tons of medicine, eight tons of milk, semi-rigid boats or some 60,000 food rations.
This aid was partly financed by the State and several local authorities and donations from associations and private companies such as Lactalis, which employ 900 people in Ukraine, said its representative from the quay facing the CMA-CGM tower. . The Marseille-based company, one of the three largest maritime freight groups in the world, chartered the ro-ro ship at its own expense, a type of boat equipped with a ramp and which can load both vehicles and containers. “The CMA-CGM foundation has already supported a dozen humanitarian operations, to India and Lebanon (country where the Saadé family is from, editor’s note)”, declared Tanya Saadé, sister of CEO Rodolphe Saadé, son of the founder. of the society. “The story of our group is that of a family that fled the war forty years ago,” recalled the president of the foundation.
First humanitarian ship chartered by the government
This shipment, worth ten million euros, will arrive on October 4 at the Romanian port of Constanta, in the Black Sea. “This is the largest French convoy to Ukraine to date,” said Catherine Colonna, the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, freshly returned from kyiv, at the foot of the boat.
“It will then be unloaded by around forty French soldiers before being transported to the humanitarian hub of Suceava, a Romanian city located on the Ukrainian border”, specified Stéphane Romatet, the director of the crisis and support center, attached to the wharf. d’Orsay. In seven months, this cell organized more than 30 humanitarian convoys to Ukraine, by air or land. This vessel is the first operation of its kind.
The shipment responds to requests and needs expressed by the Ukrainian government, which is concerned about the conditions in which its populations will spend the harsh Eastern European winter. The aid will be distributed mainly to the cities of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, Odessa, a port city twinned with Marseille, and Cherniguiv, a city north of kyiv, 70% destroyed in the first days of the crisis. invasion before the Russians withdrew.