war | Putin friend Medvedev: Macron has “urine in his head”

Olaf Scholz categorically rejects sending German soldiers to Ukraine. Putin friend Dmitri Medvedev insults Macron. More information in the news blog.

5:24 a.m.: The Russian military leadership reported a Ukrainian drone attack on Thursday night. The air defense systems in the Kursk region detected the missile and shot it down, it said on the Russian Defense Ministry’s Telegram channel. The information cannot be independently verified.

5.12 a.m.: Russian troops are throwing soldiers into the battle for the village of Krynky in waves without the use of armored vehicles, Nataliia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for the Southern Operational Command, said on Wednesday. Krynky is a small village in Kherson Oblast on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. Before the war broke out, fewer than 1,000 people lived there. The heavy fighting around the town has been going on for weeks.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had claimed that Russia had already taken Krynky, but Ukraine’s Southern Operations Command denied this on February 21. Humeniuk said, according to the Kyivindependent newspaper, that Russia made only one unsuccessful attempt to storm the village during the day because it was unable to relocate and reinforce its troops. She added that attacks are likely to increase once the rotation occurs.

4.30 a.m.: Despite the clear no from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), the head of the Munich Security Conference, Christoph Heusgen, continues to hope for a German delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. “I am not giving up hope that this “no” is not final, especially since the arguments presented are not valid: South Korea has the Taurus in use without Bundeswehr soldiers and the Ukrainians can also handle modern weapons,” Heusgen told the editorial network Germany ( RND/Thursday).

The Ukrainians have so far strictly adhered to attacking Russian positions only on Ukrainian territory. They knew that a violation would cause serious damage, “namely the loss of trust of their second most important partner after the USA, Germany.”

12:30 a.m.: Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has strongly attacked French President Emmanuel Macron. He had not previously ruled out that his country’s ground troops would also become active in Ukraine. “Firstly, he probably had urine in his head and secondly, he was incontinent in his speech,” Medvedev insulted the French head of state on his Telegram channel. He suggested that he change his diet and spoke of Macron verbally wetting his bed.

7.40 p.m.: Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised the Bundeswehr and the German population that his rejection of sending ground troops to Ukraine is an unshakable red line. “To be clear: As German Chancellor, I will not send soldiers from our Bundeswehr to Ukraine,” he said in a video message on Wednesday. “That’s true. Our soldiers can rely on that. And you can rely on that.”

NATO will not become a warring party, adds Scholz. “It stays that way.” Germany agrees with its allies: “We don’t want Russia’s war against Ukraine to turn into a war between Russia and NATO.” However, a corresponding post by Scholz was corrected on Platform X: Not he, but only the Bundestag is authorized to send German soldiers.