9:25 p.m .: The top Russian economist Andrei Yakovlev commented on the current economic situation in his home country in a long interview with “Spiegel”. He describes how many business people are desperate. “One thing becomes clear again and again in our discussions with company representatives: these people would not have started the war. This is also a problem in Western perception: many people there believe that Russia and the Putin regime are monolithic, stable, and can continue to exist like this for another ten years. I think that’s a fallacy,” said the star economist. And further: “I draw the conclusion from our conversations that most business people know very well who is responsible for their problems.”
In fact, he believes that Putin might soon have to be wary of his own people. The propaganda paints a picture that support for the Kremlin ruler is great. “But I don’t think it’s much more than 25 to 30 percent. This group is not much larger than the group of opponents of the war. If the economic situation worsens, these people will react,” Yakovlev said.
He goes on to say: “Today there are no more winners in Russia, which will lead to tensions in the elite. […] Today only a tiny group around Putin makes decisions. In doing so, they damage the interests of large sections of the elite. This fuels serious tensions within this elite. These will increase depending on the duration of the war and the worsening of the economic situation.”
Sunday, August 14, 6:59 p.m.: CDU chairman Friedrich Merz cannot imagine Germany playing the role of mediator in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. “I’ll say it detached from people: The Federal Republic of Germany has no mediating role in this conflict,” said the opposition leader in the Bundestag of the German Press Agency. “We stand together with Europe on the side of Ukraine and are therefore not neutral in this conflict.”
Merz was asked whether he could imagine that former Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, could mediate to bring the war to an end.
10:20 p.m .: According to the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia has started additional gas deliveries to the EU member state. After negotiations between Moscow and Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto last month, the Russian company Gazprom began supplying more gas on Friday than “already contractually agreed,” ministry representative Tamas Menczer said on Facebook on Saturday.
According to him, by the end of August, an additional 2.6 million cubic meters per day will come to Hungary through the TurkStream pipeline. Menczer explained that further deliveries in September are still being negotiated. He emphasized that it is “the duty of the Hungarian government to ensure the country’s secure supply of natural gas”.
Foreign Minister Szijjarto made an unannounced visit to Moscow in July to discuss the purchase of an additional 700 million cubic meters of gas. The acquisition of such large quantities of gas is “impossible” given the current “European market conditions” without Russian sources, Menczer said on Saturday.
A gas emergency plan has been in force within the EU since Tuesday to deal with the energy crisis triggered by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. The regulation provides for voluntary natural gas savings in the winter of 15 percent per country, but it allows numerous exceptions for states. Hungary is one of the countries that had requested an exception. The country is particularly dependent on Russian energy imports.
2:46 p.m .: Ukrainian Defense Minister Olekxiy Reznikov has called on the United States and other Western countries to help prosecute Russian war crimes. Ukraine needs experts in military law and specialists in investigating war crimes to punish the Russian attackers, Reznikov said on Facebook on Saturday. He sent a request to this effect via the Foreign Ministry in Kyiv to the Ukraine contact group, which includes Germany and Great Britain in addition to the USA. An international coalition must be formed to pursue the bloody deeds, the minister stressed.
Resnikov also referred in particular to the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war, who were killed and tortured en masse in Russian custody. “I have no doubt that after Ukraine’s victory in this war we will, one way or another, track down everyone involved in the barbaric killings and torture,” Reznikov said. Not only the perpetrators themselves were to be punished, but those who gave the orders and those who justified such crimes. He cited the Nuremberg war crimes trials against National Socialists after the Second World War as a model.
After the death of around 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war in Olenivka prison near Donetsk at the end of July, Reznikov again called for independent international experts to clarify the case. It is also the duty of the United Nations to urge Russia to allow Red Cross officials access to the remaining prisoners. The minister accused Russia of being responsible for the mass murder. Russia, which attacked Ukraine at the end of February, accuses Kiev’s troops of shelling the prison camp.
Reports of war crimes had surfaced soon after the Russian invasion. Women had been raped and the bodies of civilians had been found in the streets of the village of Bucha. There were also numerous attacks on theatres, schools and hospitals. The International Criminal Court based in The Hague reacted unusually quickly and initiated investigations at the beginning of March and sent the largest team of experts to date to the war zone. At a conference in The Hague in July, Western states pledged to make more money and experts available and to work more closely together on investigations.
Saturday, August 13, 10:08 a.m.: According to the US Department of Defense, the explosions at a military base on the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia were not triggered by weapons supplied by the United States. The United States has “provided nothing to Ukraine that would allow it to attack Crimea,” a senior Pentagon official told reporters on Friday. His ministry has no information on whether the explosions were rocket attacks or an act of sabotage.
Several explosions occurred on Tuesday at the Russian air force base in Saki on the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. It is estimated that eight aircraft and a significant amount of ammunition were destroyed. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the incident. The Saki base is central to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
The US has supplied Ukraine with large arms supplies since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression. However, there are no systems that would allow attacks from Ukrainian territory far into Russian-occupied territory.
According to the Pentagon official, the blasts had “fairly significant impact” on Russian air force operations. According to British military intelligence, Saki was mainly used as a base for the aircraft of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The fleet’s aerial combat ability is now “significantly weakened”.
3 p.m .: Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko has criticized Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) for his refusal to stop issuing visas to Russians. “Russian citizens are fighting in Ukraine, torturing and killing peaceful Ukrainians and children, destroying our towns and villages,” wrote the 51-year-old on social networks after a phone conversation with his Berlin colleague Franziska Giffey (SPD). Most support the “Politics of Putin and his bloody imperial ambitions,” Klitschko also justified his call for a freeze on issuing visas.
Klitschko and Giffey had called demonstratively because the mayor of Berlin fell for a telephone joke in June. At the time, the 44-year-old spoke to Russian comedians close to the Kremlin instead of the Ukrainian ex-boxing world champion.
11:00 a.m.: After the attack on the Russian military base in Crimea, Western military experts suspect that Ukraine has new long-range weapons. This could have a decisive influence on the further course of the war. The images from the independent satellite company Planet Labs show three almost identical craters in which buildings at the Saki airbase in Crimea were hit with great precision.
Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for an attack. Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podoliak said: “We do not officially confirm or deny anything (…) we have to consider that there were several epicenters of explosions at the same time.” The base from which the attack was launched is far outside the Range of the modern missiles that Western countries say they have sent to Ukraine so far.
The Institute for the Study of War said Ukrainian officials described the attack on Crimea as the start of Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the south of the country, indicating intense fighting that month and September.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, thanked Britain for new and important arms deliveries. More M270 MLRS (Multiple Rocket Launcher Artillery System) have arrived in Ukraine. The army will use them skillfully. Also, more “gifts” would be arriving soon.
9:37 a.m .: Ukraine is pressing for further help from the German side. “We are very grateful for Germany’s decision to support us,” Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefantschuk told the newspapers of the editorial network Germany (Friday editions). “I very much hope that the time between the decisions and the actual arrival of the aid will become shorter and shorter. Because we really need German technology, including tanks and howitzers.”
Germany had long hesitated to supply heavy weapons. Only two months after the start of the Russian war of aggression did Berlin make its first commitments. In the meantime, the first systems such as the Panzerhaubitze 2000, Mars II multiple rocket launchers or Gepard anti-aircraft tanks have been delivered.
Since April, the federal government has also relied on indirect tank deliveries via eastern NATO partners. Countries such as Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Greece were supposed to deliver weapons from the Soviet era to the Ukraine and receive modern replacements from Germany.
Friday, August 12, 2022, 6:10 a.m.: Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) is suing the Bundestag to restore his special rights that were withdrawn in May. Schröder demands that a former Chancellor’s office with employees be made available to him again, as his Hanoverian lawyer Michael Nagel told the German Press Agency on Friday. On Schröder’s behalf, he filed a corresponding lawsuit with the Berlin administrative court.
More on the subject: Schröder is suing the Bundestag – he wants his office back
10.10 a.m .: After his visit to Ukraine, FDP defense politician Marcus Faber reported that only a third of the self-propelled howitzers supplied by Germany and the Netherlands were still functional. Now commented on a tweet about the manageable German arms deliveries with the words: “I am ashamed of my country. I’m sorry, we’ll try to do better.”
Although Germany has supplied some spare parts, there are also repair options on site that are urgently needed. So far, these have only been available for a few minor repairs. According to Ukrainian information, ten tank howitzers 2000 have been delivered from Germany so far, plus five more from the Netherlands, said Faber. A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the operational readiness of the guns in Berlin.
In the Ukraine, Faber had visited the capital Kyiv, but also the cities of Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and Slowjansk in the east of the country. He called the situation in Kharkiv, where after a low of 100,000 now more than 300,000 people lived again, “scary”. The FDP politician described the Russian approach as brutal: “Every day, every night, hospitals and residential areas are attacked with cluster bombs.”
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