Joschka Fischer has been commenting on the current situation for a long time. Elon Musk now wants to make his Spacelink satellites available to Ukraine free of charge. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war can be found in the ticker.
More on the course of the war in Ukraine
2:40 p.m .: China has called on its residents to leave Ukraine as soon as possible. This is reported, among other things, by the state-affiliated newspaper “Global Times”. “The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine urge Chinese citizens in Ukraine to increase security and leave the country given the difficult security situation,” the official statement said.
Tensions in Ukraine have “raised to a new level,” the report said. It remains unclear whether China is alluding to a possible nuclear threat here.
12:58 p.m .: Joschka Fischer was foreign minister of the first red-green federal government – and led the party to the Kosovo war at the time. The ex-foreign minister has now commented on the current war in Ukraine. The 74-year-old told the “Münchner Merkur”: “I cannot tell you how and when this war will end. But the relationship between Europe and Russia will never be the same again. Confidence has been lost, the danger in the East remains.”
And further: “What we are experiencing is a break in time. The world we know won’t come back. I cannot tell you how and when this war will end. But the relationship between Europe and Russia will never be the same again. Confidence has been lost, the danger in the East remains.”
11:34 p.m.: France wants to train almost 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Artillery training for the Caesar howitzer has already taken place, but now it will go a little further, Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview published on the website on Saturday.
As Lecornu specified, the training will take place in three stages: first, the general training of the fighters, then the specific needs reported by the Ukrainians, such as logistics, and finally a third, which concerns training on the weapons supplied.
Just a few days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the delivery of six Caesar-type howitzers as well as radar systems and other anti-aircraft missiles. France has already delivered 18 Caesar howitzers to Ukraine.
8:44 p.m .: U-turn at Elon Musk: As the SpaceX boss announced on Twitter, he now wants to continue to provide free Starlink satellites to Ukraine through his company. “The hell with that. Even though Starlink keeps losing money and other companies get billions in taxpayers’ money, we will continue to support Ukraine for free,” Musk’s personal account tweeted.
The Starlink satellites allow Ukrainian soldiers stable communications at the front. Musk had threatened in the past few days that he would no longer make these available if the Pentagon did not pay for the costs.
7:18 p.m .: The Ukrainian General Staff registered new Russian missile and air attacks on Saturday. In the evening situation report, the military spoke of four rocket attacks. 17 times there was fire from aircraft, ten times rocket launchers were used. More than 20 settlements were hit, including Kostyantynivka in Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine and Ivanivka in Kherson Oblast. Information from the war zone can hardly be verified independently.
The Russian air strikes were significantly less intense on Saturday than on Monday, when more than 80 rockets and cruise missiles were fired. According to the Ukrainian army, several “enemy attacks” near 11 settlements were repelled. Russia again fired on the neighboring country’s positions along the entire front.
According to information from Kyiv, the Russian army again used Iranian-made combat drones. Six drones were shot down. According to the report, three Russian ammunition depots and several positions of anti-aircraft systems were hit.
4:41 p.m .: According to Russian information, the Ukrainian army has launched a new attack to liberate the occupied Cherson region in the south of the country. However, the information differed on Saturday. The deputy chief of the occupation administration, Kirill Stremousov, said there was only artillery fire. The Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow said the attack had been repelled. In contrast, Russian military bloggers reported ongoing bitter fighting. The Ukrainian army uses many tanks and armored vehicles.
The targets of the attacks are the towns of Dudchany and Mylowe in order to further reduce the area occupied by Russian troops on the northwestern bank of the Dnipro. In recent weeks, Ukraine has systematically cut off possible Russian retreat routes across the river with long-distance artillery fire. As in previous cases, the Ukrainian side did not provide any information about the attack.
1:57 p.m .: Green leader Omid Nouripour confirmed the need for further arms deliveries to Ukraine at the party conference in Bonn. “The need of the hour is that we help as quickly as possible,” said Nouripour, to great applause from the 800 or so delegates. He was tired of always discussing “where the weapons should come from”. The decisive factor is that Ukraine needs them, regardless of whether they come from the German armed forces or from industry.
Addressing the delegates, Nouripour said: “I know this is not easy for a peace party, but peace is not easy.” After the debate on foreign and security policy, in which Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also spoke, there was a motion by the Federal Executive Board Poll.
A passage was added to the application in which arms exports to Saudi Arabia are clearly rejected. “Of course we reject them,” stressed Nouripour. At the same time, he referred to “old contracts” and “joint contracts” that the traffic light government found. All the more important is the planned arms export control law, for which the responsible Federal Ministry of Economics has just worked out the key points.
12:02 p.m .: Military experts in the White House currently see no signs that Belarusian troops are preparing to invade Ukraine. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian troops would lack combat-capable mechanized troops to support a Belarusian invasion of northern Ukraine. They also lack the possibility of carrying out a mechanized advance on Kyiv.
Politically, too, Belarus is not to be expected to enter the war. According to the ISW experts, Belarusian President Lukashenko would endanger his regime domestically if he entered the war on Russia’s side. In addition, the quality of the Belarusian armed forces is too low.
Meanwhile, Russia has sent its first soldiers to Belarus for a joint force. The Belarusian Defense Ministry in Minsk confirmed the arrival of several trains carrying Russian soldiers on Saturday. No information was given on the current numbers of troop deployments or on the future strength of the joint force.
Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko announced on Monday that he would set up a joint regional force with Russia. In view of the rising tensions, it should protect the Belarusian border.
11.08 a.m .: After almost eight years as Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk left for Kyiv on Saturday, where he is to take up a new post in the Foreign Ministry. Melnyk told the German Press Agency that he left his residence by car at around 10 a.m. His successor Oleksii Makeiev is expected in Berlin on Monday. The change at the head of the embassy will only formally take place with the accreditation from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for which there is no official date yet.
The 47-year-old Melnyk became ambassador to Germany in January 2015 and has made a name for himself with an unusually tough stance against the German government for a diplomat. In the first months of the war, Melnyk became one of the most frequent guests on German talk shows. Hardly a day went by when he didn’t demand battle tanks and anti-aircraft guns and accused the government of hesitation and procrastination.
“I think I’ve managed to get Germans interested in the topic of Ukraine, to ensure that Ukraine is really recognized and understood here,” Melnyk told dpa before he left. “When I come home now, it fills me with pride that many weapon systems have been delivered from Germany, which are helping us to liberate the occupied territories and our compatriots step by step.” But Melnyk also emphasized that more had to be delivered , “to expel the Russians”.
4:30 a.m.: Faced with the Russian mobilization, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again declares that the Ukrainian armed forces would retake all of their country’s territory from Russia. “They still have people to throw on the battlefield, they have weapons, missiles, which they use against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in his evening video address. Russia still has the ability to terrorize Ukrainian cities and all Europeans and blackmail the world. But Russia has no chance of success in the war because Ukraine is making steady progress.
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