The Crimean bridge is partially destroyed. After a massive explosion, the bridge important to Putin caught fire. The Ukrainian secret service is said to be responsible for the incident. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war in the ticker.
10:52 a.m .: According to the Ukrainian online newspaper “Ukrainska Pravda”, the Ukrainian domestic secret service (SBU) is responsible for the explosion on the Crimean bridge. The blast was carried out as part of a special operation. “Ukrainska Pravda” referred to law enforcement agencies. The SBU indirectly confirmed the report.
“The bridge burns beautifully in the sunrise. A nightingale meets the SBU in Crimea,” commented the SBU, picking up a poem by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevshenko.
Saturday, October 8th, 8:51 a.m .: According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed of the serious fire on the bridge to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. He instructed a commission to investigate the causes of the fire, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday, according to the Interfax agency. According to the first information, fuel wagons of a freight train caught fire on the railway part of the Crimean bridge system, which also has a motorway. According to authorities, no one was injured. The bridge was closed to traffic.
According to the information, a section of the highway was also badly damaged. Images circulating in Russian and Ukrainian media showed flames erupting from a train and burning the entire track bed. A ferry connection should be set up, as the government in the Crimean capital Simferopol announced.
After the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine at the end of February, there were several explosions in Crimea, causing severe damage, including at military bases. There have also been repeated threats in the capital Kyiv that the bridge between the peninsula and the Russian mainland, which Putin opened in 2018, will be fired upon. Most recently, in the Kerch region, which borders directly on the bridge in Crimea, there have been repeated incidents with drones exploding.
7:55 p.m .: A few hours after the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for Memorial, a Russian court ordered the seizure of the human rights organization’s Moscow offices. The offices had been converted into “public property”, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted the court decision issued on Friday. Memorial has been banned in Russia since the end of 2021.
6:53 p.m .: Former top US general Ben Hodges expects Ukraine to recapture Russia-annexed Crimea in the coming year. “I predict that the Ukrainians will push the Russians back to the February 23 line by the end of the year,” he told Britain’s Channel 4 TV.
“They will liberate Crimea by the middle of next year. The Russian logistic system is weakening every week. The Ukrainians are getting better every week,” continued Hodges. The American was the supreme commander of the US land forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017.
6:36 p.m .: Chancellor Olaf Scholz has warned Russia against the use of nuclear weapons. “The use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable,” said the SPD politician on Friday after an informal EU summit in Prague. “That would be dangerous for the world.” It is important to give a clear answer to the threats. “And this answer must be: Everyone should leave it alone.”
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats were taken seriously, but that his words would not be used as a form of blackmail.
5.30 p.m .: The outgoing Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, gave the “Spiegel” a big farewell interview – and in it renewed his criticism that Germany was too hesitant on questions of arms deliveries. Melnyk said of his talks with German politicians: “The federal government is refusing certain arms deliveries because they say they don’t want to go it alone. But that’s exactly what she’s doing to the Russian deserters. Look how other EU countries reacted – not only the Baltics or the Poles, but also the Belgians, the Slovaks or the Finns. It’s typically German, many politicians just want to be do-gooders.”
Melnyk defended his sometimes very undiplomatic statements, especially on Twitter: “I regret a lot of what I’ve written, but unlike others, I don’t delete my tweets. I formulated most of it spontaneously out of emotion and not out of calculation. And I stand by that.”
4.35 p.m .: In Germany, more than a million refugees from Ukraine have now been recorded. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser gave the news portal “T-Online” the number 1,002. 763. “We saved the lives of many women and children from Ukraine,” said the SPD politician after a report on Friday. “We have managed this huge task well so far, much better than in previous escape movements.”
Faeser spoke of a humanitarian effort. “The longer the war lasts, the more difficult it is to accommodate and care for so many refugees,” said the minister. She has invited local and state representatives to coordinate refugee aid next Tuesday. There is uncertainty about the number of Ukrainians living here. It is unclear how many of those who have entered Germany since the beginning of the war have left the Federal Republic.
Faeser was concerned that more people are coming to Europe via the Mediterranean and the Balkan route. “That worries me,” she said. “That’s why we’re taking countermeasures with a bundle of measures.”
2:55 p.m .: After US President Joe Biden warned of a nuclear war, the left demands a statement from the federal government and a peace initiative. “When the US President warns of a nuclear Armageddon, all the alarm bells must ring in the federal government,” said the party’s faction leader, Dietmar Bartsch, on Friday in Berlin.
In February, the US predicted Russia’s attack on Ukraine, while the German government and Europe underestimated the danger at the time. “This mistake must not be repeated,” warned Bartsch. More and more people are rightly afraid of a nuclear catastrophe. “The chancellor should address the population together with the foreign minister and explain his government’s next foreign policy steps,” demanded the left-wing politician. “We need peace initiatives from Berlin, Paris and Washington.”
In response to threats from Moscow, US President Biden said the world had not faced the prospect of “Armageddon” since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. At that time, the USA and the Soviet Union were close to nuclear war, but negotiated to eliminate the danger.
2:11 p.m .: The federal government is said to have issued an entry visa to Germany for a suspected Russian spy. This is reported by the “Spiegel”. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and an intelligence service from another European country are said to have previously raised objections, according to the report. The German consular department is said not to have noticed the suspicion of espionage against the man. The reason is an internal error, according to research by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The man is said to have applied for a visa in Moscow for the first time in July. He is said to have presented an invitation from the Russian Consulate General in Leipzig. His entry was rejected when it became apparent during the check that secret services classified him as a spy. In August he is said to have submitted a second application when Russia is said to have asked for a new examination in view of the negotiations on the accreditation of German embassy staff. Apparently his application was approved. The mistake has now been corrected and the visa has been declared invalid.
1:32 p.m .: Vladimir Putin is currently feeling headwind from his inner circle. As the “Washington Post” reports, citing the US President’s daily secret service briefing, a member of this inner circle is said to have contacted Putin directly in recent weeks and expressed sharp criticism of his actions in the Ukraine war.
The unnamed member of the Kremlin leadership is said to have openly confronted the Russian president with military mistakes in Ukraine. The US secret service concludes from this that there are tensions within the Russian government elite.
“Since the occupation began, we have observed a growing concern in Putin’s inner circle,” a Western intelligence official said. “Our assessments indicate that they are particularly troubled by recent Russian casualties, misguided direction, and significant military shortcomings.”
7.30 a.m .: In view of the Russian threats of a possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, US President Joe Biden has warned of the danger of an “apocalypse”. The risk of a nuclear “apocalypse” is as high as it was at the time of then-President John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Biden said on Thursday (local time) at a Democratic fundraiser in New York. Meanwhile, Moscow accused Ukraine of “calling for the start of a new world war”.
In a television speech on September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons. According to experts, these would most likely be attacks with tactical nuclear weapons. Their explosive power is less than that of strategic nuclear weapons. However, Biden warned that a tactical nuclear attack still carries the risk of widespread impact.
Putin “does not joke” when he threatens to use tactical nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, Biden said. His threats are a consequence of the defeats of the Russian army on the battlefields in Ukraine.
Friday, October 7th, 7:02 a.m .: Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) warns against dismissing threats in the Russian war against Ukraine as a bluff. The attack on Ukraine was a “profound turning point,” Merkel said on Thursday evening at a ceremony marking the 77th anniversary of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” in Munich. And one “where we would all be well advised to take words seriously and deal with them seriously and not dismiss them as bluffs in the first place”. She again emphasized that a lasting peace in Europe could only come about “with the involvement of Russia”. “As long as we haven’t really managed to do that, the Cold War isn’t really over either.”
Merkel praised the position of Germany, the EU and NATO to restore Ukraine’s sovereignty. “I think this can go hand in hand with always thinking about what seems so unthinkable at the moment, namely how a future security architecture can be developed within the framework of international law,” Merkel’s speech manuscript says.
Merkel, who is now 68 years old, did not run for the Bundestag elections last year after 16 years as chancellor. After initially avoiding any statement on the war in Ukraine, Merkel now appears as a speaker from time to time. In doing so, she has made frequent comments about Putin, especially recently – and there are good reasons for that. Merkel wants to publish her memoirs in autumn 2024, as her publisher recently announced.
On the subject: It is no coincidence that Merkel is suddenly talking so much about Putin
9:04 p.m .: According to experts, the risk of an accident at the Russian-occupied Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporizhia is not banned. “We keep saying what needs to be done, which is to prevent a nuclear accident, which is still a very, very clear possibility,” said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi on Thursday in Kyiv. The plant is shut down due to fighting in the region.
To secure the plant, a nuclear safety and protection zone is to be built around the power plant. According to Grossi, he is negotiating this with Kyiv and Moscow. He then wanted to travel on to Moscow. Talks there were held at a “very high management level”, as Grossi said. It was unclear whether he would meet President Vladimir Putin.
Grossi stressed that the IAEA does not comment on military matters. His on-site team is exclusively there to ensure the safety of the system with the local employees. The IAEA team will now be expanded from two to four. However, he stressed that annexation of the surrounding area – and Russia’s nationalization of the nuclear power plant – are illegal under international law. For the IAEA, Zaporizhia is a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
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