A Russia military plane carrying medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) is en route to the United States after the Kremlin confirmed that United States President Donald Trump accepted Moscow’s offer of help.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said late on Tuesday that Mr Trump “accepted with gratitude this aid of humanitarian nature” in a phone call with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
The US is grappling with the coronavirus epidemic, the total number of cases climbing to 189,000 by Tuesday.
The Kremlin expects that the US would be in a position to offer aid to Russia as well at some point when US medical supplies producers raise their output volumes, Mr Peskov said.
Mr Trump made a passing reference to Russian aid during a press conference on Monday, saying that “Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things”.
Reports of the US administration accepting aid from Russia have caused concerns that Moscow could be using the coronavirus crisis to at least get the US to ease some of the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, its involvement in a separatist conflict in Ukraine as well as meddling in the 2016 US elections.
Details of the Russian shipment remained unclear, however.
Footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry showed a military plane full of cardboard boxes taking off from an airfield outside Moscow late on Tuesday night.
The Russian military sent several planes with medical supplies and doctors to Italy last month. The Russians did not specify the contents of the shipments but Italian media reported that local authorities found most of them to be “useless”.
Government critics in Russia have accused President Putin of putting his global ambitions before the country’s well-being.
“Our regions are short of the most basic necessities, they’re running low even on face masks,” opposition leader Lyubov Sobol tweeted. “Putin lives in a fairy-tale world and plays his geopolitical games as the situation gets worse every day.”
Russia had 2,777 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Wednesday morning, with 24 deaths.
