live blog
Kiev Mayor Klitschko has called on the international community for more support in anti-aircraft defense. North Korea has criticized US arms sales to Ukraine. All developments in the live blog.
Ukraine says it has repelled serious Russian attacks in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army said “55 attacks were repulsed” in several towns north and west of the village of Novobachmutivka. Further south, in the west of the city of Donetsk, Russian forces “with the support of the air force tried 15 times to break through the defenses of our troops,” Kiev said.
According to Ukrainian information, soldiers were able to “continue to hold back the enemy” in several towns west of Donetsk, including in Krasnogoriivka. The city is located around 20 kilometers from the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk and is considered a Ukrainian bulwark in the region. However, since the capture of the nearby towns of Marinka and Avdiivka by Russian soldiers, Krasnogorivka has become more vulnerable.
The Ukrainian army yesterday admitted a “deteriorated” situation at the front. Russian troops have been advancing in eastern Ukraine since February. At the weekend, Moscow’s soldiers took over the village of Novobachmutivka. Kiev warns that Russia will try to achieve success on the battlefield ahead of “Victory Day” on May 9.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian parties to the conflict cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
Ukraine accuses the short messaging service Telegram of blocking several of the country’s official software bots. Among them is the bot from the Ukrainian military intelligence service GUR, as the secret service itself announced on Telegram: “Despite the blocking of our bot – your personal data is safe.”
According to the Reuters news agency, Telegram has not yet commented on this. A bot is a program that performs specific tasks on the Internet. Among other things, it can simulate conversations with users or collect content on specific topics.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Telegram has become an important information channel for both sides. Media, authorities and governments operate their own channels on the platform. The founder of Telegram is the Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov. However, he left Russia in 2014 after refusing to deactivate the accounts of Russian opposition members on his short message service, which has since been sold.
According to information from Kiev, the two Ukrainians who were allegedly killed by a Russian in Upper Bavaria were members of the country’s armed forces. The two men were in Germany for medical rehabilitation after war injuries, Ukrainian media reported. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has instructed his diplomats to keep a close eye on the case and to maintain constant contact with Germany’s security organs so that the suspect is punished to the fullest extent of the law, the reports said.
Kuleba thanked the German authorities for the arrest of the 57-year-old suspect, as the Internet portal Ukrayinska Pravda reported. The Russian is said to have killed the two Ukrainians who were found with stab wounds on the premises of a shopping center on Saturday. It was still unclear whether there was a connection to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko has called on the international community to provide more support in anti-aircraft defense. “We have a deficit in anti-aircraft systems,” Klitschko told the newspapers of the Funke media group. In the Ukrainian capital, enemy drones would be shot down within a narrow radius of the city. Since parts of the rockets that were fired fell down, the radius had to be expanded. “It must be possible to shoot down the drones and missiles on their way to the capital.” Therefore, more support for air defense is needed.
After two years of war, the damage in Kiev is enormous. The air strikes damaged and destroyed more than 800 buildings, including almost 440 residential buildings. More than 200 people were killed in the air raids. But it’s not just about Kiev: citizens in Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkiv also need good protection.
With regard to his relationship with President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, Klitschko criticizes a lack of cohesion among leading politicians in Ukraine. “Unfortunately, in this time of war there is no unity between the political forces,” he says.
North Korea has condemned the US supply of ATACMS guided missiles to Ukraine. “The United States secretly delivered long-range missiles to Ukraine, sparking unrest and concern in the international community,” state news agency KCNA quoted the director of the North Korean Defense Ministry’s Department of Foreign Military Affairs as saying. “The United States can never defeat the heroic Russian army and people with the latest weapons or military support.”
The USA admitted delivery of the long-range missiles last week. Military ties between the governments in Pyongyang and Moscow are becoming ever closer, which the United States and its allies say is leading to an escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
According to the colonel general of the Ukrainian army, the troops fell back in three positions. Russian authorities report two dead in Ukrainian attack on occupied Zaporizhzhia territory.