Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock sees the Russian President increasingly isolated. Putin has now found a scapegoat for the Russian defeat in Kharkiv – and promptly replaces him. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war in the ticker.
06.00 a.m .: Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to try to identify culprits for the disaster in the Kharkiv region about a month ago. His latest scapegoat: General Alexander Zhuravlev. According to a Russian media report, the commander of the Western Military District was recently replaced by General Roman Berdnikov. The US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) analyzes that Putin probably wants to shift the blame for the defeat in Kharkiv.
He is trying to link the youngest slippers – including those in the city of Lyman – with a face, according to the “ISW”. And prevent further defeats. Should the Russians lose further areas around Kharkov and also in the Luhansk region, Putin would already have a new scapegoat ready in Berdnikov, according to the “ISW”. According to the analysis, this could attract ever-increasing criticism.
05:11: Russia has put Marina Ovzyannikova, the former journalist of the state-controlled Channel One, on the Interior Ministry’s “wanted list”, the Russian state media TASS reported on Monday. The television journalist became known around the world for protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with an anti-war poster during a live broadcast
Ovzyannikova was then placed under house arrest by a Moscow court until October 9. If convicted, she faces a long prison sentence for spreading false information about the Russian armed forces. Her ex-husband, Igor Ovsyannikov, said she escaped from house arrest and took her daughter with her, TASS said.
3:26 a.m .: According to a report by the British newspaper “Times”, Ukraine wants to apply as a venue for the 2030 World Cup. Ukraine is said to be part of Spain and Portugal’s joint bid for hosting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is said to have approved the application.
The new partnership is to be officially announced by the football bosses of Spain and Portugal during a press conference at Uefa headquarters on Wednesday, with the message said: football can restore hope and peace. Although security guarantees would be required, it is expected that by 2030 the Russian invasion will be over and the country’s reconstruction will be in full swing.
Ukraine’s involvement is seen as a potentially powerful vote-winner among Fifa’s 211 member associations and a way to counter efforts by Saudi Arabia to present a joint bid with Egypt and Greece for 2030. Uefa wants the 2030 World Cup to be held exclusively in Europe. The tournament will be held in Qatar this year and in the USA, Canada and Mexico in 2026.
1.40 a.m .: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock currently sees no chance for negotiations to end the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. The negotiation offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Kyiv read something like this: We will rob your country, subdue your citizens, and you can then sign it, the Greens politician told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. “It’s the opposite of peace. This is terror and lack of freedom.”
Nevertheless, they themselves and the government were constantly looking for a diplomatic solution. “We try every day. Every day since February 24, one of the more than 190 countries in the world or an international organization on behalf of the world community has asked the Russian President to stop bombing,” the Foreign Minister said. “The only answer from the Russian President is more atrocities.”
Regarding the criticism, also from Ukraine, that Germany was too hesitant to deliver arms, she said that in the past few months she had “repeatedly reflected self-critically” on whether Germany was delivering fast enough. “But at the same time we must not ignore the fact that we are in an unpredictable situation because the Russian President is breaking every international, political and human rule.” But Germany’s military resources are also limited. “And it would be presumptuous to believe that Germany could single-handedly change the course of the war. We can only do that together with our international partners.”
12:57 a.m .: Against the background of the Ukrainian offensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has campaigned for the trust of the population in the Russian-occupied areas. “Russian propagandists intimidate people in the territories still controlled by the occupiers, claiming that Ukraine will consider almost anyone who stays in the occupied territories as collaborators. Absolutely crazy stuff,” Zelensky said in his daily video speech on Monday. Anyone who hasn’t offered their services to the Russians has nothing to fear, he said.
The 44-year-old emphasized that there was only isolated support for the Russian occupiers, although “hundreds of thousands” were temporarily under the occupying power. In doing so, he contradicted the Russian narrative that the majority of people in the four occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia aspired to Russia. With this justification, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin annexed the regions after holding sham referendums.
Zelenskyi reported on further recaptures by the Ukrainian army and announced the payment of pensions and social benefits in the regained territories. Ukraine, which was badly hit financially by the war, secured financial aid from the European Union worth five billion euros on Monday.
12:40 a.m .: At the start of his visit to Africa, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dimitri Kuleba accused Russia of promoting the division of the continent. “Russia didn’t just invade Ukraine. It is spreading decay and supporting military coups in Africa,” Kuleba said Monday in the Senegalese capital Dakar. A few days ago, the West African country of Burkina Faso was rocked again by a military coup. A number of people were out and about with Russian flags in the capital Ouagadougou at the weekend.
The junta of the new ruler Ibrahima Traoré had stated that it wanted to use “other partners” for the fight against terrorism in the country, without giving any further information. Russia is increasingly militarily active in the Sahel region. Mali is now concentrating on cooperation with Russia and has turned away from France on security policy issues.
When the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s war of aggression, many African countries refrained from clearly condemning it. 35 of the 193 UN member states abstained. In addition to China, India and Brazil, these included 17 African countries, including South Africa and Senegal.
Tuesday, October 4th, 12:04 a.m.: A fundraising campaign in the Czech Republic raised enough money to give Ukraine a modernized T-72 main battle tank. Within about a month, 30 million crowns – the equivalent of almost 1.2 million euros – came together, as the organizers announced on Monday. More than 11,000 people took part in the Ukrainian embassy’s campaign under the motto “A gift for Putin”.
The tank already has a name: the organizers christened it “Tomas” after the co-founder and first President of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. Czech Defense Minister Jana Cernochova thanked everyone involved. They gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a “beautiful present” for his 70th birthday on October 7, she noted sarcastically. She called the Kremlin boss a “KGB agent, murderer and crook”.
The next step is to collect money to buy ammunition for the tank. The Ukrainian embassy in the Czech Republic has already received donations totaling more than 8.6 million euros. In addition, the Czech Ministry of Defense has delivered weapons and ammunition worth more than 160 million euros to Ukraine since the start of the Russian attack at the end of February.
8:29 p.m .: The Russian government has issued sanctions against the German natural gas storage company Peissen GmbH. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a corresponding decree on September 30, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday. Until shortly after the outbreak of the war, half of the company belonged to the Russian energy supplier Gazprom, whose shares were then taken over in trust by the Federal Network Agency.
Erdgasspeicher Peissen GmbH manages the “Katharina” gas storage facility in Saxony-Anhalt. The storage facility, named after the Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great, should be able to accommodate 600 million cubic meters of gas in its final stage of construction – planned for 2025. According to media reports, this makes it the fourth largest natural gas storage facility in Europe. But because Gazprom stopped filling the storage facility after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the German government intervened to prevent a gas shortage.
After the trustee takeover of the German Gazprom subsidiaries, Moscow spoke of an expropriation. Russia has responded with counter-sanctions. Before Erdgasspeicher Peissen GmbH, the government blacklisted Gazprom Germania.
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