Military situation:
At least 15 people were injured in rocket attacks in the Kyiv region on Thursday, according to the online newspaper Ukrajinska Pravda. Civilians are among the victims, Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram. According to the governor, more than ten Russian rockets have also landed in the Chernihiv region northeast of Kyiv. Previously, Kyiv and Chernihiv had not been attacked by the Russian military for weeks.
Political situation:
The foreign ministers of Russia and the United States have not spoken to each other since the war began on February 24. Russia’s chief diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, has now announced that he will respond to his US colleague Antony Blinken’s request for a phone call “if time permits.” At the moment he simply has a busy schedule with international contacts, said the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, according to the TASS agency.
Blinken announced on Wednesday that a phone call “in the coming days” with Lavrov would be about the release of US basketball player Brittney Griner and her compatriot Paul Whelan, who were imprisoned in Moscow. The US Secretary of State also wants to address compliance with the agreement on the export of grain from Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls on the international community to clearly denounce Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Nobody in the world invests more in terrorism than the leadership in Moscow, the Ukrainian President said in a video message on Friday night. Russia should therefore be recognized as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
In the USA, US senators have already introduced a corresponding resolution. However, the decision on this lies with the US State Department, which also keeps the official list of states supporting terrorism. It currently includes the countries of Syria, Iran, Cuba and North Korea, which have been subject to strict sanctions by the USA.
According to Zelenskyy, Russian forces continued “a series of strategically senseless and brutal attacks” on Donbass in eastern Ukraine on Thursday. Several civilians were killed in different parts of the country, according to Ukrainian sources. As a rule, the information provided by the warring parties can hardly be verified independently. Ukraine has been fighting off a Russian invasion for more than five months now.
Most recently, a successful mediation by the United Nations raised hopes that further compromises might be possible between the warring parties. According to the UN, ships with grain on board will soon leave Ukrainian waters after the agreement between Kyiv and Moscow. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said there were a number of freighters already loaded in the Black Sea ports ready for departure.
A week ago, Ukraine and Russia signed the agreement with the United Nations and Turkey to allow grain exports from Ukraine from three Black Sea ports. After the war began, port operations were suspended for security reasons – Moscow was accused of blocking grain exports as revenge for Western sanctions. In African countries in particular, the grain blockade had exacerbated the already acute food shortages.
What will be important on Friday:
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will hold talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in Athens. She then travels to Turkey. The double visit to the two NATO partners is important to her, especially in these difficult times when Russia is trying to split the Western alliance, Baerbock told the Greek newspaper “Ta Nea”.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz meets Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte in Lithuania. He will also visit the Rukla military base, where the Bundeswehr is leading a NATO unit.
After a long wait, the first Gepard anti-aircraft tanks have arrived from Germany. The Ukrainian military says it bombed a Russian-held bridge in Kherson. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
Ukraine’s three ports intended for the export of grain resumed work on Wednesday, according to the Navy. The federal government approves the sale of 100 modern self-propelled howitzers to Kyiv. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war in the ticker.
