Already a subscriber?Australia will give Ukraine another $31 million in energy and humanitarian aid but will not be sending coal to the war-wracked country, as it requested.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong: “The advice to me is that support for the energy fund is a more efficient and effective way of providing assistance to Ukraine.”Ukraine’s government has pleaded for an urgent coal shipment from Australia, as Russia bombards its power plants with missile and drone strikes.
“The advice to me is that support for the energy fund is a more efficient and effective way of providing assistance to Ukraine,” she told reporters in Adelaide on Friday.“This amount of money, should Ukraine wish to spend it for coal, would yield an equivalent amount of coal to what we saw previously.”Instead of providing coal, the funding announced on Friday will be used for heat and electricity amid concerns of a shortfall in the European winter.
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been targeted. Emergency services find victims of a missile strike on a hypermart in Kharkiv.An extra $10 million of emergency humanitarian aid will go to the United Nations for essentials such as food, water and shelter.