live blog
Status: 06/09/2022 03:05 a.m
Poland’s President Duda has criticized Chancellor Scholz and French President Macron for their talks with Russian President Putin. Ukraine reports deaths and injuries. The developments in the live blog.
3:05 a.m
United Nations wants deal on grain exports
The United Nations is seeking an agreement to unblock Ukrainian grain exports and Russian food and fertilizer shipments to world markets. This was said by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Otherwise, hundreds of millions of people would be threatened by an unprecedented wave of hunger. In this context, good cooperation with contacts in Moscow, Kyiv, Ankara, Brussels and Washington had been established in the past ten days, he explained.
He did not want to comment on the details so as not to jeopardize the chances of success. “This is one of those moments when quiet diplomacy is necessary, and the well-being of millions of people around the world could depend on it,” Guterres said.
Ukraine and Russia produce almost a third of the world’s wheat and barley and half of its sunflower oil. Russia and its ally Belarus are the second and third largest producers of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, respectively.
1:13 a.m
Telephone call with Putin: Duda criticizes Scholz and Macron
Polish President Andrzej Duda has criticized the phone calls between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “These talks are useless. They only legitimize someone who is responsible for crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine,” he told the “Bild” newspaper.
“Did anyone talk to Adolf Hitler like that during the Second World War? Did someone say that Adolf Hitler had to be able to save face?” Duda continued to quote the newspaper. He doesn’t know such voices. “Everyone knew: you have to defeat him.”
3:05 a.m
Experts: Russia has had little success with cyber attacks
According to experts, Russia has had far less success with digital warfare in Ukraine than many had expected. Cybersecurity experts expected devastating, large-scale cyberattacks on Ukraine, General Karol Molenda, head of Poland’s National Cybersecurity Center, said Wednesday at an international trade fair in Lille, France. But Ukraine was prepared and “withstood the attacks of Russia”.
Lithuania’s chief of cybersecurity, Colonel Romualdas Petkevicius, told AFP news agency that Russia appears incapable of “waging a coordinated cyber and kinetic war”. There is cyber activity all over Ukraine right now, “but I don’t think it’s very well planned.” General Didier Tisseyre, head of the French cyber defense forces, made a similar statement. However, Tisseyre also underlined that the analysis of the cyber conflict is complicated by the fact that independent hacker groups have joined the fight, while companies such as Microsoft and Starlink are supporting Ukraine.
3:05 a.m
Ukraine: Civilians killed in Russian attacks
According to the authorities, several civilians were killed or injured in attacks on Ukrainian locations. Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko blamed Russia for four dead and five injured in the government-held part of the region in the east of the country.
The Ukrainian army spoke of seven repelled Russian attacks in the Donbass. 31 fighters were killed and several armored vehicles were destroyed. The Russian military destroyed about 20 houses as well as two schools and a train station when shelling Ukrainian locations. The Russian army is preparing further offensives in the direction of the strategically important city of Sloviansk and is shelling civilian and military infrastructure, the Ukrainian general staff said. Mortar and aerial attacks were reported from the Sumy region. At least one civilian was injured.
According to the Defense Ministry in Kyiv, Russia has concentrated up to 30 older T-62 tanks in the Zaporizhia region of southern Ukraine. They are used there to fortify defensive lines. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maljar again called for heavy weapons from abroad to fight the Russian military: “The Ukrainian army is professional and motivated, but we really don’t have enough heavy weapons to defeat the enemy.”
conflicting parties as a source
Information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body in the current situation.