Anger in Greece at Chancellor Scholz and his planned exchange of armored rings is growing. Meanwhile, a secret NATO paper shows possible Russian plans for the Balkans. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war here in the ticker.
Wednesday, June 8, 6:33 a.m .: Ukraine has rejected Russian claims that Russian troops have the strategically important eastern Ukrainian city of Sievjerodonetsk largely under control. “They don’t control the city,” Luhansk region governor Serhiy Gaiday said on Telegram on Tuesday. However, he admitted that it is “very difficult to hold Sieverodonetsk” and even spoke of a “mission impossible”.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had previously said Russian forces had full control of the city’s residential areas. However, the Russian army continues to try to conquer the industrial area and the surrounding settlements.
Gajday said the “enemy” had “mobilized all forces, all reserves” to cut off the main road from Lysychansk to Bakhmut, thereby encircling both major cities. “They are bombing Lysychansk very hard,” the governor said of the neighboring city, which is separated from Sievarodonetsk by a river. Taking the two cities would allow Russia to advance towards the major city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. Moscow would thus come a decisive step closer to its goal of completely conquering the Donbass.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated on Tuesday evening that “the situation on the front has not changed significantly in the last 24 hours” and that “the absolutely heroic defense of Donbass continues”. He said more than 31,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the war began in late February. This is almost 300 deaths a day. “However, the day will come when even for Russia the number of casualties will become unacceptable,” he predicted. An independent confirmation of the dead on both sides is not possible.
8:22 p.m .: Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu meet in Ankara on Wednesday for talks on a possible deblocking of Ukrainian grain exports. Lavrov landed in the Turkish capital on Tuesday evening, it is his second trip to Turkey since the beginning of the Ukraine war. The Turkish government is trying to play a mediating role in this.
Dozens of container ships are currently stranded in Ukrainian ports and are being blocked by the Russian military. As a result, Ukrainian exports of wheat, sunflower oil, fertilizer and other goods cannot be processed as usual. Shipping in the Black Sea is also hampered by sea mines. At the request of the United Nations, Turkey offered to escort maritime convoys from Ukrainian ports, despite the fact that sea mines were sometimes discovered near the Turkish coast.
7.40 p.m .: According to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland is currently signing an extensive contract for the supply of arms to Ukraine. It is “one of the largest, if not the largest, arms export contract in the past thirty years,” said Morawiecki on Tuesday during a visit to the armaments company Huta Stalowa Wola in the south-east of the country. The Polish weapons would be very important for the combat zones in eastern Ukraine, Morawiecki added. Ukraine will receive part of the funds for the purchase from the EU and pay part of it itself.
The Prime Minister of Poland did not say what kind of weapons it is exactly and what the scope of the arms deal is. However, when making the announcement to the press, he and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak posed in front of a series of Krab self-propelled howitzers manufactured in Stalowa Wola.
6.48 p.m .: Russia has written out the Kremlin-critical writer Dmitry Glukhovsky for a national manhunt. The 42-year-old is wanted for a violation of the Russian Criminal Code, the Russian state agency TASS reported on Tuesday. Glukhovsky told the German Press Agency that he is currently not in Moscow. He assumes that he is wanted for insulting the Russian army. “I am ready to repeat everything I said: stop the war! Admit this is a war against an entire people. And end it!” he said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The author of the “Metro” trilogy, who mainly lives abroad and also speaks German, has been a harsh critic of the Russian political system for years. After the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, he repeatedly condemned the invasion on social networks, pointed out the losses in the Russian armed forces and reported on the murder of Ukrainian civilians.
“The most important structural problem of the Russian political system is that it is made up of thieving dumbass, living on the understanding of crooks, competing with each other in cannibalistic fervor, carrying out the orders of a remote, hypocritical old man with a personal crisis” , he wrote on Twitter in May.
6:20 p.m .: Greece is to receive 100 German infantry fighting vehicles as compensation for the delivery of Soviet-design weapons to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced this ring exchange last week. But the Greeks are not as enthusiastic about the Scholz plan as the chancellor himself: it is too complicated and above all it takes too long.
At a press conference in Athens on Monday, government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou emphasized that Greece would only deliver the weapons if the promised German armored personnel carriers actually arrived in Greece. But that would still take a while, said a high-ranking ministry representative in Athens to the “Bild” newspaper. “It can take at least two months until the first tank from Germany is with us on the islands where we have the GDR tanks in action.” The plan was nonsense, the representative continued.
Because the process would take a long time: Greece is currently still waiting for an invitation from its special committee to Germany to check the Marder tanks. The committee includes five to six military experts who are tasked with reviewing the condition of the tanks and determining which of the tanks should go to Greece. Then they have to be prepared, some converted. Initially, the tanks would then only be taken to mainland Greece, and would have to be re-inspected and painted in the colors of the Greek military. According to the report, Greece would only deliver the old GDR tanks to Ukraine once the tanks with the necessary ammunition were on the Greek islands. The official concluded to the “Bild”: “When should Ukraine get the tanks from the ring exchange – when the war is over?”
5:41 p.m .: According to insiders, Russia is increasing its export capacities near the Russian-Chinese border because of the partial oil embargo imposed by the EU. A total of 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) are expected to flow from the Siberian oilfields to the east’s Kozmino loading port in the coming months, up 20 percent from the previous year’s average, according to three people familiar with the process Reuters news agency. The East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline is used for this, which is the main transport artery for Russian oil to Asia, especially to China. A total of 1.64 million barrels per day can be pumped through the pipeline. Chinese companies have been using more Russian oil in recent months.
5:26 p.m .: Ralph Thiele, Chairman of the Political-Military Society and President of EuroDefense Germany, is critical of Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU and NATO. “Ukraine was a very difficult state, keywords corruption and mafia,” says the security expert in an interview with “ntv”. “For example, the mafia is still active in selling the small arms that we ship to Ukraine. This is a real problem.”
This is also problematic because it contradicts the basic ideas of the EU and NATO. “The basic idea, neither in the EU nor in NATO, is that we take in problem children,” explains Thiele. There is something “psychological about putting Ukraine on the list of candidates. But there is actually some work to be done to bring them into a receptive state.”
5:14 p.m .: The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj still considers an end to the war waged by Russia against his country only possible on the “battlefield”. “Above all, victory must be on the battlefield,” said the 44-year-old in an interview with the Financial Times published on Tuesday. However, Ukraine still lacks the technology to attack. Without additional equipment, it would be difficult for Kyiv, the losses would be great. “People have priority for me,” emphasized the President.
The West must continue to have an interest in Ukraine’s sovereignty. “There can be no talks without Ukraine, behind our backs.” Ukraine will not become more willing to talk because of a lack of money, fuel or because of the destroyed infrastructure. “We have already lost too many people to simply give up our territory,” stressed the head of state. Moscow is demanding that Kyiv cede territory to end the war.
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