Live blog: ++ Rheinmetall delivers 20 more “Marder” ++

Rheinmetall plans to deliver 20 more Marder infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine this summer. President Zelenskyj demands the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. The developments in the live blog.

Mykhailo Podoliak, spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted about the Ukrainian counter-offensive. Its own military continues this in several areas. It’s about preparing for bigger battles, “preparing a battlefield,” as Podoljak put it.

At the same time, he criticized the West for hesitant support with arms. Time always plays a role in war, Podoljak said. The time it took to convince Western countries of the support they needed allowed Russia to set up and fortify its own positions.

Last year, 225 people from the Ukraine were naturalized in Hamburg. This was announced by the statistical office for Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. A total of 1,050 people were naturalized, 20 percent more than in 2021. Most came from Syria, followed by Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Poland and Ukraine.

In a guest article for the magazine “Publik-Forum”, the former Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse calls for a policy aimed at relaxation and balance towards Russia not to be abandoned. Militarily, Russia is “invincible,” wrote the SPD politician. Diplomacy must therefore be given its due again, so that the guns fall silent as soon as possible. At the same time, Thierse emphasized that there must be military solidarity with Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the same as Russia, the guest article continued. Russia remains an important part of Europe and, after Putin at the latest, must be part of the perspective of a pan-European security architecture.

According to the regional governor there, two people were killed in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Cherson. There are also several injured. The shelling hit a transport company. One man was killed immediately, another later succumbed to his injuries in hospital.

The German armaments group Rheinmetall has announced that it intends to deliver 20 more Marder infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine this summer. The German government placed the corresponding order in the low double-digit million euro range in May. The armored personnel carriers are outdated models from former Bundeswehr stocks.

Ukraine is keeping a low profile as far as the counter-offensive of its own military is concerned. But apparently it is not going as the Ukrainian government had hoped.

The Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz has launched legal action against Russia in the US with the aim of obtaining billions in compensation. Naftogaz’s assets once included the Chornomornaftogaz concern, which extracts significant amounts of gas from the Black Sea and is located on the Crimean peninsula. Crimea was annexed by Russia around nine years ago.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague had therefore awarded Naftogaz compensation of five billion dollars in April. According to Naftogaz, it has never received this sum from Russia. Hence the legal way. The group decided to go to court in the USA because the USA had frozen Russian assets after the outbreak of the war of aggression against Ukraine.

At least one person is said to have been killed and one injured when Ukrainian troops shelled a road in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine. This was reported by the Russian news agency Tass. It is based on information from local rescue workers.

As the Russian news agency Tass reports, citing the domestic secret service FSB, radioactive material was to be smuggled out of the country and sold to a client in Ukraine. Five men were arrested who wanted to buy a kilogram of cesium-137 for $3.5 million on behalf of this Ukrainian. The secret service therefore alleges that the material was to be taken out of the country in order to stage an incident with alleged weapons of mass destruction intended to discredit Russia.

The Ukrainian army says it has repelled a Russian missile attack on a military airfield in the western Khmelnitsky region. The Ukrainian Air Force said 13 Russian cruise missiles were shot down. The rockets were fired by Russian bombers from the Caspian Sea area.

US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have urged Ukraine’s territorial integrity at a meeting in Washington. In a joint statement, Biden and Modi, who traveled to the United States for a state visit, emphasized that “international law, the principles of the UN Charter and territorial integrity and sovereignty” must be respected in view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

At a joint press conference with Biden in the White House, Modi, who has opposed efforts by Western countries to isolate Russia internationally, also asserted that he wanted to work for “peace” in Ukraine. “Since the events in Ukraine began, India has placed an emphasis on dispute resolution, dialogue and diplomacy,” Modi said. “We are absolutely ready to help restore peace in any way we can.” India has so far refused to clearly condemn Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. On the contrary, the country buys Russian oil on a large scale and thus provides Russia with important financial resources.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has renewed his terror allegations against Moscow and called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. “The complete evacuation of the nuclear power plant is required,” he said in his daily video message. The world must increase the pressure on Moscow to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Radioactivity knows no neutrality, he said to those countries that have not yet taken a position in the conflict. Zelenskyy repeated the accusation that Moscow was planning an attack in the nuclear power plant occupied by Russian troops, which it then cynically “hoped to hide under this or that catastrophe.”

The situation around the nuclear power plant, which is close to the front and was partly under fire, has recently raised concerns about a nuclear catastrophe. An observer mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is on site. Kiev has already accused Moscow of laying mines in the facility.

Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer has called for the immediate repair of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which was destroyed by a bomb attack and through which Russian natural gas was transported to Germany in the past. Kretschmer said in an interview with “Welt-TV”: “This pipeline was blown up by an attack, by a crime. There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t start securing and repairing this pipeline now.”

The CDU politician also requested information from the federal government about the background to the attack. The people in Germany would like to know what the federal government knows about the fact that the US foreign intelligence service, the CIA, has warned of an attack.

According to the Ukrainian president, Russia has formed special groups to make the victims disappear after the Kakhovka dam collapsed. “The Russian devil wants to collect the corpses with special troops and of course destroy them,” said Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his evening video speech. The Ukrainian military states that the epidemiological situation in the affected areas has drastically worsened due to the spread of hepatitis A.

According to media reports, the UN blames both Russia and Ukraine for killing a total of more than 200 children. Wagner boss Prigozhin accuses the Russian leadership of lying.