Ukraine makes participation in the G20 summit dependent on the further course of the war. Scholz fears that Putin can continue the war against Ukraine for a long time. Dependence on Russian crude oil is greater than previously assumed. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war in the ticker.
9:00 p.m .: Ukraine is making its participation in the G20 summit in Indonesia in November dependent on the situation in the country and on wartime opponents Russia. “Our participation depends on whether the Russian Federation will be there,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Kiev on Sunday, according to the Interfax-Ukraine agency. “I told the Indonesian President (Joko Widodo) that we are grateful for the invitation, but we have a security situation.” Russia had invaded Ukraine a good four months ago.
He has doubts whether many states will take part in the summit if Russian representatives go there, Zelenskyy said. If there were even more violence by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians, such as the murder of residents in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, Russia would have to reckon with “complete isolation”.
6.30 p.m .: According to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Russian President Vladimir Putin made the decision to launch a war of aggression against Ukraine well in advance. “I think the decision for this war was made a year before it started, or possibly earlier,” he said in an interview with CBS, which was published in full on Sunday. “And so he will be able to continue the war for a very long time,” Scholz continued in English. The conversation took place after the NATO summit in Madrid, which lasted until Thursday.
Scholz also admitted that it was wrong to become unilaterally dependent on Russian energy in the past. “So we should have invested in an infrastructure across Europe that gives us the opportunity to change the offer from one day to the next,” said Scholz. That is a lesson that has now been learned in Europe. When asked how much money Germany is spending on energy from Russia, Scholz only replied that the amount is falling. Because of the sanctions, Putin cannot spend the money on products from the West – for example in the field of modern technology.
According to analyses, Russia made 93 billion euros in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the war alone. A report published in mid-June by the Finnish institute CREA also revealed that among the individual states, Germany was the second most important customer after China, at 12.1 billion euros.
5.40 p.m .: Russia has brought back 70 diplomats and other employees of its representations in Bulgaria who were expelled from the EU country. Together with their families, the Russians left the capital Sofia on Sunday in two special planes. They were declared “undesirable persons” by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday. Russia is therefore threatening to completely close its embassy in Sofia, which would be unique within the European Union.
Bulgaria had given the 70 Russians a deadline on Tuesday to leave the country by the end of the week. The expulsion was justified by the fact that the majority of the diplomats worked “directly for foreign services” – a paraphrase for secret services. The former Eastern Bloc state had previously expelled Russian diplomats from the country – a total of 21 since 2019.
4:55 p.m .: The federal government believes that sustainable reconstruction of war-ravaged Ukraine should already be tackled in concrete terms. The course for a reform-oriented reconstruction, which strengthens Ukraine’s course towards the European Union, must be set now, said Development Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) before the start of the Ukraine reconstruction conference this Monday in Lugano, Switzerland. The goals are a modern administration, effective fight against corruption, sustainable infrastructure and energy security.
“Rebuilding Ukraine will be an immense task that will take decades and cost hundreds of billions of euros. That’s exactly why we have to talk about reconstruction now,” said Schulze, who is taking part in the two-day conference in Lugano, the German Press Agency. Russian troops had invaded Ukraine a good four months ago.
2:58 p.m .: Russia has accused the West of preventing peace negotiations with Ukraine and thus prolonging the war. “Now is the moment when Western countries are doing everything they can to continue the war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on state television on Sunday. Under US leadership, the West is allowing Ukrainians “not to think about, talk about, or discuss peace.” In doing so, Peskov was reacting to statements by Western politicians that they did not want to press Ukraine into negotiations.
At the moment there is apparently no need to calm the situation, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin suspected. Nevertheless, the moment for negotiations will come. For peace, however, Ukraine must accept Russian demands, said Peskov. Putin has named the recognition of the illegally annexed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as Russian territory and the cession of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as war goals. In addition, it is about the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine and its renunciation of NATO membership.
2:03 p.m .: The chairman of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, spoke about the current situation in the “Tagesspiegel”. He made it clear: “Germany and the EU are not at war. But we are a war target, everyone should be aware of that. Putin wants a Eurasian Union from Lisbon to Vladivostok. And so far Putin has been doing what he says. Putin himself defines when we would be at war. He hates our way of life. He hates it. Freedom, democracy, the rule of law. It’s about nothing less than that, and that has to be described with all clarity.”
12:53 p.m .: Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on Germany to break away from authoritarian states economically, but at the same time warned against ideas of self-sufficiency. “We live from dependencies, as I have said elsewhere in a nutshell. The success of our economic model is based on global integration. We have to admit that to ourselves,” said Steinmeier, according to the text of the speech, on Sunday in Hamburg at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the overseas club.
“Russia’s murderous attack has made us bitterly aware that today we have to protect ourselves from irrational and unpredictable actors,” the president continued, according to the text of the speech. “We must make our democracies resilient and our economy resilient.”
At the same time, the head of state warned against becoming too dependent on China. “In some strategically important fields, our dependence on Chinese raw materials is significantly greater than our dependence on Russian gas in recent years.” This affects pharmaceutical products and in particular technologies that are indispensable for the energy and mobility transition.
“If we want to make ourselves independent of gas, oil and coal from Russia and achieve climate neutrality, then we have to expand the production of electric vehicles, wind and solar energy even faster and more decisively,” said Steinmeier. At the same time, however, dependence on China had to be reduced keep an eye on it and look for ways to “obtain rare earth metals from other sources as well, to recycle or replace them”.
9:45 p.m .: More than four months after the start of the war in Ukraine, the ruler of the ex-Soviet republic, Alexander Lukashenko, who was loyal to Russia, threatened the West. If there is an attack on Belarus, his country will react immediately, Lukashenko said on Saturday, according to the state news agency Belta, in a speech on the country’s upcoming Independence Day.
“Less than a month ago I gave orders to the armed forces units to target what you can now call the decision centers in their capitals,” said the 67-year-old. He did not explain exactly what he meant by that.
He added: “Don’t touch us – and we won’t touch you.” Despite the fact that Russia itself attacked Ukraine, Moscow and its ally Minsk have repeatedly presented themselves as victims of supposedly hostile Western and NATO policies in particular.
Since the end of February there have been fears that Belarus could officially join the war on Russia’s side. Lukashenko has already admitted that in the first weeks of the war, Russian rockets were fired at Ukraine from Belarusian territory.
7.30 p.m .: The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko has accused Ukraine of rocket attacks on his country. “About three days ago, maybe more, an attempt was made from Ukraine to attack military targets in Belarus,” said Lukashenko on Saturday, according to the state news agency Belta. “Thank God our anti-aircraft systems intercepted all missiles fired by Ukrainian troops,” he said.
11:24 a.m .: According to a report, Germany is even more dependent on Russian crude oil than recently stated by Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens). A response from Habeck’s ministry to a request from Jens Spahn (CDU), a member of the Bundestag, shows that in May 27.8 percent of the crude oil imported by Germany came from Russia, as reported by “Welt am Sonntag”. Habeck said at the end of April that the proportion was only twelve percent at that time.
According to the report, the Economy Ministry explained the discrepancy between the minister’s statement and the actual number by saying that oil-importing companies had signaled at the time that they could withdraw from existing contracts with Russian suppliers at short notice if Russia stopped deliveries or imposed a complete embargo.
Spahn said about the discrepancy in the minister’s statement and the actual quota: “The reduction in dependence on crude oil to twelve percent announced by Economics Minister Habeck weeks ago was apparently more of a spontaneous estimate.” The deputy CDU chairman criticized the fact that the dependence on Russia has hardly decreased in oil recently. In March, the rate was 37 percent.
There was also criticism of the slow decline from the coalition: the still high import share of Russian oil was “absolutely unsatisfactory”, said the energy policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Michael Kruse, the “Welt am Sonntag”.
5:02 a.m .: Argentina is increasingly relying on diplomacy to end the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. “I had a phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which I expressed my support for all negotiations to end hostilities and achieve a final peace,” Fernández wrote on Twitter. “Latin America rejects the use of force and encourages dialogue to resolve conflicts.”
Chile’s President Gabriel Boric wrote on Twitter that he had expressed his solidarity with Zelenskyy. “I also told him that he could count on Chile’s support on humanitarian issues.” Zelenskyj wrote on Twitter that he continues to build relations with an important region – Latin America.
At the beginning of February, Fernández and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited Moscow and offered Russian President Vladimir Putin to deepen relations. Argentina could help Russia enter the Latin American market, Fernández said in the Kremlin at the time. He also thanked Putin for the delivery of corona vaccines. Argentina condemned the attack by Russian forces on neighboring Ukraine.
Saturday, July 2, 1:50 a.m.: The US government sees the recapture of Snake Island as a success for the Ukrainian military. Russia’s claim that the withdrawal was a goodwill gesture lacks credibility, a senior US Defense Department official said on Friday. “The Ukrainians have made it very difficult for the Russians to maintain operations there,” he said, according to the Pentagon. That is the reason why the Russians left the island. Russia occupied Snake Island shortly after attacking Ukraine on February 24 and announced its withdrawal on Thursday.
11:20 p.m .: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has condemned the rocket attack on a residential building in the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa as “deliberate, targeted Russian terror”. “It was a simple house with about 160 people. Ordinary people lived in it, civilians,” he said in a video message on Friday.
So far, 21 dead and around 40 injured have been counted. “Unfortunately, the death toll is increasing.” Neither weapons nor military equipment were hidden in the building – “as Russian propagandists and officials always tell about such attacks”. The impact of the three rockets was neither a mistake nor an oversight.
Twelve Russian rockets also fell in various places in the city of Mykolaiv in the south, Zelensky said. “It’s just one night and one morning.” He sends his condolences to all the relatives and friends of the victims, the President emphasized.
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