Status: 04/29/2022 03:01 a.m
According to Chancellor Scholz, the war against Ukraine is also directed against democratic values. The USA wants to facilitate the delivery of armaments based on a historical regulation. The developments in the live blog.
According to the Ukrainian leadership, Russian plans to consolidate control of the occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine are doomed to fail. The secretary of the Ukrainian Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, described an expected Russian referendum in Kherson as “legally and internationally meaningless”. The referendum with which the Russian occupiers wanted to proclaim a “People’s Republic of Cherson” is a “classic” with which Russia wants to legalize its actions.
The introduction of the Russian ruble as a means of payment in the occupied territories is “classic Russian practice,” said Danilov, according to the Unian agency. These efforts by the Russian side would not lead to success either. “They will try to introduce a currency or pseudo-currency for these areas for some time,” he said. But in view of the resistance to be expected from citizens, this will be “very short-lived”.
Based on a regulation from the Second World War, the USA wants to facilitate the delivery of armaments to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. After the Senate, the House of Representatives also passed a corresponding bill. The President is temporarily authorized until 2023 to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe affected by the Russian war of aggression. Certain formal requirements in the procedure are to be suspended.
The US Congress passed a similar lend-lease law in 1941 during the Second World War: This allowed armaments to be delivered quickly and in large quantities to the Allies fighting the National Socialists.
The US is currently investigating the recent rocket attacks on Kyiv. “We’re trying to analyze and find out what happened here, what was hit and with what kind of ammunition,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN. Ukrainian authorities previously said the Russian military carried out the attack.
In his evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again emphasized the importance of the visit by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. “It was very important that the Secretary General visited Borodyanka in the Kyiv region and saw with his own eyes what the Russian occupiers were doing there. There is no doubt that the Russian army in Ukraine laid the foundations of the world order established after the Second World War trampled underfoot,” said the President.
After the conclusion of the talks with Guterres, a total of five rockets were fired at Kyiv. Nevertheless, he believes that evacuations in Mariupol are possible with the help of the UN: “But we also need the Russian side, which approaches the matter without cynicism and actually implements what it says.”
conflicting 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 conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
Ukraine and Bulgaria have agreed on close military and economic cooperation. This was announced by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy after a meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov. Among other things, damaged Ukrainian military equipment should be repaired in Bulgaria. “Another issue on which we have agreed is the delivery of Ukrainian electricity to Bulgaria and the use of the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline together with the Bulgarian side,” said Zelenskyy. Just the day before, Russia had stopped supplying natural gas to Bulgaria because of alleged non-payment.
During the visit of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Ukrainian presidential adviser Olexy Arestovych criticized the Russian rocket attacks on Kyiv as the “stupidest variant ever”. “How should the UN chief or the United Nations react to this at all,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyj’s adviser. “They (the Russians) just spat in his back, so juicy, with blood.”
Russia “shot Guterres in the back with this attack,” Arestovych said, according to the Unian agency. “For a cruise missile, the distance between the point of impact and Guterres’ location is about the same as two millimeters for a pistol. So the shot missed his temple.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of wanting to destroy democratic forms of government. “After all, Putin is not only pursuing the goal of destroying Ukraine. His war is directed against everything that constitutes democracy: freedom, equality before the law, self-determination, human dignity,” wrote Scholz in a guest article for “Welt”. From the Chancellor’s point of view, the democratic countries are more united in the face of this danger than they have been for a long time. “This shows what unites us as democracies: the conviction that law must set limits to power,” said the SPD politician.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is opposed to the withdrawal of Ukrainian soldiers from their last bastion in Mariupol, the Azovtal Steel Works. Putin clearly said civilians could leave Azovstal, his spokesman said. The fighters would have to lay down their arms. This is non-negotiable.