In St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin responded to the rumors about his health by quoting Mark Twain. Olaf Scholz has promised Ukraine further aid. And: Angela Merkel talks about Nord Stream 2. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war in the ticker.
5:54 p.m .: According to a senior general, the Ukrainian army has suffered high material losses since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression. “To date, as a result of active combat, we have an estimated 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent equipment losses,” Brigadier General Volodymyr Karpenko told the US magazine “National Defense”. “An estimated 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles, 400 tanks and 700 artillery systems were lost.”
Fighting in the war is currently concentrated in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. The situation is particularly dramatic in the strategically important city of Sievjerodonetsk in the Luhansk region, where the Russian army again bombed the Azot chemical plant on Friday. According to Ukrainian sources, there are more than 560 civilians, including 38 children, in the factory premises.
In the Donetsk region, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, four civilians were killed by Russian attacks on Friday and six others were injured. According to the authorities, two people died and 20 were injured in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Friday morning. The region’s governor Vitaly Kim said the Russian missile attack happened in a residential area.
3:48 p.m .: During a question and answer session at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin mocked the rumors of illness surrounding the Russian President. When asked about the rumours, Putin replied, according to the British Guardian, with a quote: “As Mark Twain once said: the rumors about my death are insanely exaggerated.”
Since the beginning of the Russian attack on Ukraine, there have been increasing rumors that the Russian President could be suffering from a serious illness. However, there is no confirmation or evidence of this.
1:11 p.m .: According to official information, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has visited another front region – Mykolaiv in the south of the country. A video published on Saturday on his Telegram channel shows Zelensky inspecting ruins in the city and handing out medals after a briefing.
He took part in a meeting on important issues in the region. “We discussed the state of the economy, the restoration of the water supply and the situation in agriculture. Particular attention was paid to threats from land and sea,” reads the video’s description.
Among other things, you can see how Zelenskyy honors the military governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitaly Kim, and the mayor Oleksandr Senkevich with medals. Shortly after the war began, Russian troops crossed the Dnipro River near Cherson. At the same time, neighboring Mykolayiv seemed about to fall. But the Ukrainian troops were able to stop the Russian advance and in some cases even pushed it back. Fighting is currently going on along the territorial borders between Kherson and Mykolayiv.
12.43 p.m .: Shortly after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Kyiv, the Union wants to increase the pressure to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine. A motion by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag states that German arms deliveries to Ukraine should be “immediately and noticeably increased in quantity and quality”. The application, which was first reported by “Welt am Sonntag”, was presented to the German Press Agency on Saturday.
A spokesman said the application was finally voted on in the parliamentary group. The application is to be discussed in the Bundestag next week. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to make a government statement on the upcoming EU, G7 and NATO summits on Wednesday.
The federal government has promised Ukraine seven self-propelled howitzers, three multiple rocket launchers, around 50 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks and an Iris-T missile defense system. Again and again there is criticism that the weapons are delivered too late.
11.04 a.m .: Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised Ukraine further help in the fight against Russia. The SPD politician said in a video message published for the first time on Saturday: “We will continue to provide financial resources. We will help rebuild. We will continue to deliver weapons that are urgently needed to defend Ukraine’s independence.”
According to the federal government, a video by Scholz on a central topic is to be published weekly under the name “Kanzler compact” – his predecessor Angela Merkel (CDU) also published a video message on Saturdays.
Scholz stressed that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Many people have already died, many houses, many towns and villages have been destroyed. “I have now boarded a train in Poland with Italian Prime Minister (Mario) Draghi and French President (Emmanuel) Macron and traveled to Kyiv. We looked at the destruction in Irpin near Kyiv. Terrible.” Scholz was in Kyiv on Thursday.
The Chancellor said that it is now a matter of combining solidarity with a perspective. “Because many are fighting for freedom and democracy in Ukraine, they want to know that this will lead to Europe.” EU accession candidate status is necessary for Ukraine. “We will now talk about this in Brussels. Already on Thursday. And try to get a ‘yes’ 27 times to a concrete decision, a joint decision by the European Union, which also opens up this perspective.”
06:24: Russian media have presented two US soldiers fighting in the Ukrainian army and captured by troops loyal to Moscow. In an interview with the Kremlin-affiliated newspaper Izvestia, one of the men justified himself by believing Western “propaganda” about the “bad Russians” and therefore went to war, which the paper showed on its Telegram channel on Thursday. “We are not told in the Western media how incompetent and corrupt the Ukrainian army is,” he said.
The second prisoner appeared on the Kremlin channel RT. He sent only a greeting to his mother and spoke of the hope of being allowed to return home. According to the Russian media, both soldiers are from the US state of Alabama and are said to have been captured near Kharkiv.
It is still unclear who captured them. This may be important for their future fate. Troops of the pro-Russian separatists from the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are also fighting alongside Russia. They have already sentenced three foreigners from the ranks of the Ukrainian army – two Britons and one Moroccan – to death in a show trial. In Russia, on the other hand, the death penalty is suspended.
6.20 a.m .: After the EU Commission’s recommendation to officially appoint Ukraine and Moldova as candidates for EU membership, Deputy President of the EU Parliament Katarina Barley warns against cutting back on the admission criteria. “There must be no hasty accessions. Anyone who is once in the EU cannot be excluded,” said the SPD politician to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (NOZ).
In his own words, Barley would expressly welcome the granting of candidate status to Ukraine. This would be “an important signal to Moscow that the EU will not be intimidated when it comes to defending our values”. With a view to other accession candidates, however, it is important not to make a “loose interpretation” of the criteria for EU membership.
6.01 a.m .: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has welcomed the EU Commission’s recommendation on an EU accession process for his country. “Ukraine deserves this good news,” Zelenskyy said in his evening video message on Friday. The recommendation of the EU authority is a “historic success for everyone who works for our state”. The fighting in eastern Ukraine around the cities of Sievjerodonetsk and Lysychansk continued unabated.
Zelenskyy said about a possible accession process that Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU was “not only positive for us”. She is “the biggest contribution to Europe’s future for many years”. On Friday, the EU Commission recommended officially granting Ukraine the status of an EU accession candidate. Next week, the 27 EU member states will have to decide on a possible candidate status, which requires a unanimous decision.
5:20 a.m .: Poland is demanding further punitive measures against Russia in order to persuade Moscow to give in to the Ukraine war. “It’s about expanding the sanctions. In our view, a seventh package of sanctions must be launched as quickly as possible. We have to keep up the pressure,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina told Welt am Sonntag before the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. “We are going ahead with this, we enjoy the support of our Baltic partners and hope that the other Europeans will also agree to tougher sanctions against Russia.”
5:32 a.m .: The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has confronted neighboring EU country Romania with the difficult task of serving as an alternative route for the export of Ukrainian grain. Because of the inadequate transport infrastructure, Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis recently described this problem as a “logistical challenge of epic proportions”. In an interview with the German Press Agency, he saw no quick solution.
The transport routes from the Ukraine to Constanta alone are tedious. “More than 80 percent of the incoming Ukrainian grain reaches our port on small cargo ships via the Danube,” says Florin Goidea, general director of the largest Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta. The way by truck is even more difficult: The trucks from the Ukraine sometimes have to wait for weeks at the border crossings because of the formalities. In the port of Constanta, on the other hand, the daily 20 to 25 incoming Ukrainian grain trucks cause crowds, as Goidea complains. Access by rail is as good as blocked because the Romanian state railway CFR parked 700 disused wagons at the port station – more than half of which have since been removed.
From the beginning of the Ukraine war until the beginning of June, 15 ships with a total of 242,000 tons of Ukrainian grain left Constanta, Goidea said. That would be just 1.21 percent of the 20 million tons of grain from last year’s harvest that Ukraine is currently planning to export. Throughout 2021, 25 million tons of grain from Romanian production and from neighboring countries were exported via Constanta. And the next harvest is just around the corner.
12:18 a.m .: Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) defended the controversial decision to build the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline despite the Russian annexation of Crimea and justified it, among other things, with consideration for the German economy. “I didn’t believe in change through trade, but in connection through trade, with the second largest nuclear power in the world,” Merkel told the editorial network Germany (RND). Against this background, she considered the pipeline to be justifiable after the negotiations on the Minsk peace agreement for eastern Ukraine.
But it wasn’t an easy decision. “The thesis at the time was: If Nord Stream 2 is in operation, Putin will no longer supply gas through Ukraine or will even attack it.” The West ensured that gas was still supplied through Ukraine and that it continued to receive transit fees. Putin then attacked Ukraine on February 24, even though not a single cubic meter of gas had flowed through Nord Stream 2. “In this sense, gas was not a weapon,” Merkel said.
She referred to the already high energy prices at that time due to the promotion of renewable energies, the nuclear phase-out and the beginning of the phase-out of coal. “At the time, the German economy opted for pipeline gas transport from Russia because it was economically cheaper than liquid gas from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and later also from the USA.” Politically, it was a question of whether instead of Russian Gases, the significantly more expensive and ecologically controversial liquefied gas was bought “against the wishes of the economy, against Germany’s industrial strength”.
Merkel emphasized “We were willing to support the construction of two LNG terminals in Germany with taxpayers’ money. But until the last day of my tenure, no company built an LNG terminal in Germany because there was no importer who would have booked long-term capacities in advance because of the high price.”
Saturday, June 18, 12:01 a.m.: Shortly after his visit to Kyiv, Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again sent warning words to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We will not accept a dictated peace,” he said on Friday evening in Tutzing, Upper Bavaria: “The sanctions that we imposed on Crimea are still there. The sanctions that we imposed because of Donbass are still in place.” And the current measures would also remain in place for the time being, said Scholz. Putin must learn this point.
The Chancellor also made it clear that Germany’s humanitarian and economic support for Ukraine would not be cut off. The destruction in Irpin and in several other places showed the “incredible brutality” with which Putin is continuing this war. The bombed-out cars that families tried to flee in show how much the war is aimed at personal destruction. Wherever Putin uses weapons, “grass will no longer grow.” It’s all about power and size.
10:55 p.m .: According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s accession would be a win for the European Union. “Our rapprochement with the European Union is not only positive for us,” he said in his video address on Friday evening in Kyiv. “This is the greatest contribution to the future of Europe for many years.” Only with Ukraine will the EU be able to secure its power, independence and development in the future, he said. “We are one step away from the start of full-fledged integration into the European Union,” said Zelenskyy. The values of Ukraine are European values. “The Ukrainian institutions remain stable even under the circumstances of the war.” The integration will have a positive effect on the citizens: “The closer we stick to other European countries, the more opportunities we will have to give all Ukrainians a modern, secure life guarantee.”
9:02 p.m .: Not all of Putin’s old allies are on Russia’s side in the war of aggression against Ukraine. One of Moscow’s allies now spoke at the International World Economic Forum in St. Petersburg on the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – referring to the right to territorial integrity.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said in his speech that he will not recognize the eastern Ukrainian separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. Putin’s guest of honor also assessed the economic situation differently than his Russian host. The Russian president had claimed during the International World Economic Forum that the West’s economic dominance was at an end.
You can read more about the position of the Kazakh President and Putin ally here.
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