live blog
Status: 05/22/2022 12:14 p.m
Polish President Duda made a surprise trip to Ukraine and is scheduled to speak in parliament in Kyiv. Germany’s former ambassador to Russia accuses President Putin of wanting to provoke a refugee crisis. The developments in the live blog.
12:11 p.m
Poland’s President gets applause in Kyiv
Polish President Andrzej Duda has become the first foreign head of state to address Ukraine’s parliament since the start of the Russian invasion. Nobody can disturb Polish-Ukrainian unity, said Duda in his speech, which Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko published live on Facebook.
The parliamentarians rose again and again to applaud the guest from Poland. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also present. Duda’s solidarity visit was surprisingly announced in the morning. The 50-year-old traveled to Ukraine for the second time since the outbreak of war at the end of February.
12:00 o’clock
Ukraine reports heavy fighting around Severodonetsk
Heavy fighting continues in eastern Ukraine around the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the Luhansk region. Positions of Ukrainian troops would be shelled with Russian artillery along the entire front line in the area, the General Staff in Kyiv said.
Shaded in white: advance of the Russian army. Shaded in green: Russian-backed separatist areas. Crimea: annexed by Russia.
Image: ISW/05/20/2022
Russian troops tried unsuccessfully to storm towns north, east and south of Severodonetsk. Fighting was just as fierce for villages south of the route from Lysychansk to Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. The Russian army has been trying for days to cut off supplies from the Donetsk region to the Ukrainian groups around Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
According to Ukrainian sources, a bridge over the Siwerskiy Donets between the twin cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk was specifically destroyed the day before with 240-millimeter mortars. There were also artillery battles and bombardments in the Donetsk region.
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.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that almost 40 targets had been attacked from the air in the past 24 hours, including five weapons depots in the Donbass. In addition, more than 580 targets with rockets and artillery were fired at nationwide.
Heavy fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions
Victoria Reith, WDR, daily news 10:00 a.m., May 22, 2022
11:47 a.m
Ukraine: Russia steps up airstrikes across country
According to Ukrainian sources, Russia is intensifying its airstrikes throughout Ukraine. The Russian army is continuing “its missile and air strikes on the entire territory” and has “increased the intensity,” the Ukrainian army general staff said. Accordingly, Moscow is increasingly using the air force “to destroy important infrastructure”.
Local Ukrainian authorities confirmed a Russian missile attack on the village of Malyn west of Kyiv. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow said on Saturday that it had destroyed a significant Western supply of weapons there with “high-precision, long-range sea-based weapons”. The Ukrainian authorities, on the other hand, spoke of damage to “civilian infrastructure”. The General Staff did not provide any information on a delivery of weapons that had been fired upon.
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.
11:13 a.m
Käßmann: Starving children worldwide are Putin’s war victims
The Protestant theologian Margot Käßmann urges more attention to starving children in the world. No one should look the other way, writes the former chairwoman of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany in her column in the “Bild am Sonntag”. “The desperate children of this world need our help just as much as the refugees we take in.” Starving children are also “victims of war” by Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Käßmann, referring to the global grain and food crisis in the wake of the Ukraine war.
On Thursday, the aid organization World Vision announced that millions of children around the world were at risk of starvation in the coming weeks. World Vision International President Andrew Morley said: “Millions of children are suffering from this terrible hunger crisis caused by a deadly combination of conflict, climate change and Covid-19.” Rising costs for fuel, fertilizer and wheat are consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Former EKD chair Margot Käßmann warns that nobody should look away from the starving children around the world.
Image: dpa
10:21 a.m
The situation in the morning
Russia intensifies offensive in the east: shelling of train stations and residential areas results in deaths
Marius Reichert, WDR, tagesschau24 10:00 a.m., 22.5.2022
10:05 a.m
Ammunition in the war for Ukraine: burned out
The war in Ukraine could go on for months and develop into a grueling trench war in the Donbass. Both sides use large quantities of ammunition: the Russian army is probably running out of modern cruise missiles, the Ukrainian artillery is firing a caliber that is not manufactured in the West.
Both armies face very different challenges to ensure supplies for months.
09:06 a.m
London: Russia sends armored support to Severodonetsk
The Russian army has deployed its only company of BMP-T armored support vehicles in the battle for the city of Severodonetsk, according to the British MoD. In combat, the BMP-Ts are primarily intended to protect their own main battle tanks, which are vulnerable to anti-tank units.
Russia developed the vehicles based on experience gained in the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the ministry explained in its daily situation report. The conflicts had shown that heavy battle tanks, such as Russia has in large numbers, are vulnerable and inefficient in urban combat.
According to London, the company that has now been sent is the only one in the Russian army to use the support vehicles. It is said to have previously suffered heavy losses in the failed advance on Kyiv. However, the British military does not assume that the units will have a major impact on the fighting around Severodonetsk because their numbers are too small.
Heavy fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions
Victoria Reith, WDR, daily news 10:00 a.m., May 22, 2022
7:18 a.m
President of Poland delivers speech in parliament in Kyiv
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has returned to the capital Kyiv to support Russia’s war-torn Ukraine. The Polish presidential administration in Warsaw announced that on Sunday he would be the first head of state to give a speech in the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, since the war began three months ago.
Duda is committed to ensuring that Ukraine is granted EU candidate status as quickly as possible. The Polish head of state had already visited Kyiv after the outbreak of war in April and also met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj there. After his return, Duda accused Russia of waging a “total war” in Ukraine. Duda said in mid-April that he would never forget the impressions of Borodjanka, which was destroyed by air raids and rockets.
6:23 a.m
FDP Vice: Narrow purpose of Bundeswehr billions
FDP Vice Johannes Vogel is against a possible softening of the planned 100 billion package for the Bundeswehr. Civil protection is also a very central state task, Vogel told the German Press Agency. “But I believe that the special fund is rightly about the real military alliance and defense capability. Interpreting this too far would lose sight of the goal of finally making the Bundeswehr operational again,” said Vogel, who was also the first parliamentary director the FDP parliamentary group.
He expects approval from the opposition Union. He “experienced this in a statesmanlike manner” during the Ukraine war. “It’s about healing the years of neglect of the Bundeswehr, also and especially under the leadership of the CDU government. It’s absolutely inconceivable to me that Friedrich Merz doesn’t want to do his part to change that,” said Vogel, looking at the CDU leader.
03:54 am
DGB boss warns of uncontrolled rearmament
The DGB chairwoman Yasmin Fahimi does not want to spend the 100 billion euros from the Bundeswehr special fund just on armaments. “It must not come to an uncontrolled rearmament that sparks new provocations,” she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. We need more than a well-positioned Bundeswehr, “namely, above all, development cooperation and conflict prevention.”
1:52 a.m
Ex-ambassador: Putin wants to provoke refugee crisis
The long-standing German ambassador to Russia, Rüdiger von Fritsch, accuses Moscow of using the global supply crisis caused by the Ukraine war and the resulting threat of refugee movements as a means of warfare. “Vladimir Putin is specifically trying to create hunger crises in the Middle East and North Africa,” said von Fritsch in the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”. That is why Russia is preventing Ukraine from exporting grain and even bombing grain silos.
“Putin’s calculus is that after grain supplies collapse, starving people will flee these regions and try to get to Europe – like the millions of Syrians who fled the horrors of war did then,” said von Fritsch, who informed Putin in met in person several times in the past. “With new streams of refugees, he wants to destabilize Europe and build up political pressure so that Western countries give up their tough stance on Russia.” This is “a new hybrid warfare,” criticized the diplomat.
Von Fritsch did not believe that the war would end quickly. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Putin “tipped over the chessboard” and “abruptly ended the successful attempt to create security in Europe together”. Defeat in Ukraine is out of the question for Putin, as he is now fighting for his own power in Russia, said the ex-ambassador. Therefore, there is a high probability “that he will try to continue and escalate this war.” According to von Fritsch, he does not believe that the Russian head of state could also use nuclear weapons.
12:37 a.m
Zelenskyy: Situation in Donbass “extremely difficult”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the situation in Donbass as “extremely difficult”. The Russian army is trying to attack the cities of Slavjansk and Severodonetsk, he said in a video message published on Sunday night. “The Ukrainian armed forces are holding back this offensive.” Every day that the defenders thwart Russia’s plans is a concrete contribution on the road to victory.
At the same time, Selenskyj warned that the war could be forgotten in those parts of the country where there is currently no fighting. One shouldn’t be careless, he warned. “Ukrainians die every day for our independence.” The war is not over yet. “We have to keep fighting.”
Zelenskyj called for further sanctions against Russia. He also spoke to Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi about this, said the head of state. Many Western countries have already imposed unprecedented punitive measures against Russia. Zelensky said the Russian army had destroyed 1,873 educational institutions in Ukraine since the start of the war three months ago. “Russia sent practically all of its resources to destroy us.”