According to military expert Carlo Masala, the Ukraine war could last into next year. Ex-CIA chief David Petraeus is optimistic about Ukraine’s chances of success – but he still has his doubts. All voices and developments on the Ukraine war here in the ticker.
9:14 p.m .: The Russian gas company Gazprom makes the delivery stop via the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline due to an alleged design defect in the Siemens Energy turbine used. Because of the increased risk of fire and explosion, the Rostechnadzor technical supervisor has prohibited the turbine from continuing to operate, Gazprom said on Monday evening in Moscow. A company with the identified deficiencies contradicts “the norms of Russian legislation”.
Gazprom failed to resume gas supplies to Europe on Saturday after scheduled turbine maintenance. The company justified this with allegedly leaking oil from the Siemens Energy unit.
Oil is leaking from the Trent 60 turbine at Russia’s Portovaya pumping station in a place where it is very hot, Gazprom wrote on Monday. The oil could ignite; then the risk of explosion threatens the safety of the entire pumping station. The problem did not occur when this turbine was serviced in July. However, it has already been observed in other turbines of this type. This suggests that the error was in the design and can only be remedied by a conversion at Siemens Energy.
The federal government considers the technical problems with the pipeline to be advanced. She accuses Moscow of refusing gas supplies for political reasons. The Kremlin blames the West for the delivery stop and its sanctions against Russia.
2:55 p.m .: In the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporizhia occupied by Russian troops, the last reactor still working was taken off the grid on Monday. This was announced by the Ukrainian state operator Energoatom in the messenger service Telegram. The reason is a fire triggered by attacks that damaged a power line between the power plant and the Ukrainian power grid.
Because for Petraeus, a residual doubt remains – despite the defense that Ukraine has so far “mastered with flying colors”: “But they have not yet demonstrated the same competence in conducting offensive operations with combined arms, in which they use the actions of tanks, infantry, artillery, mortars, anti-aircraft artillery, engineers, electronic warfare, attack helicopters, close air support, and so on, as well as the myriad logistical support functions needed to maintain offensive forces.”
But here, too, the former CIA chief is optimistic: “I think that the Ukrainians have the expertise, motivation, determination and skills to pull this off, but the coming days will show if this is really the case .”
11:56 p.m .: The first Bundeswehr soldiers of a new brigade arrived in Lithuania on Sunday to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank. Around a hundred soldiers from Panzergrenadierbrigade 41 and military material arrived in Klaipeda on a ferry from Kiel. They should set up an advanced command post there in order to hold joint training and exercises in coordination with the Lithuanian armed forces, as the Bundeswehr announced in the short message service Twitter.
The Bundeswehr is thus making a contribution to the tactical planning of the joint alliance defense on NATO’s eastern flank, it said. The Bundeswehr is thus creating the conditions to be able to immediately relocate the parts of the brigade remaining in Germany to Lithuania if the threat situation intensifies.
As a reaction to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, NATO decided at its summit in Madrid at the end of June to strengthen the eastern flank. Germany held out the prospect of a multinational “combat brigade”. A brigade consists of around 4000 soldiers. It is now important “to show a visible presence in Lithuania for a year with a high degree of flexibility and resilience” and to coordinate the exercises with the requirements on site, Brigadier General Christian Nawrat said on Twitter.
Speaking to journalists in Klaipeda, he said the “message to our local allies on the eastern flank” was that Germany was committed to ensuring security there. According to a senior Bundeswehr representative, the first exercises could be held in October. Around 1,500 Bundeswehr soldiers are currently stationed in Lithuania. The new German-led brigade is to be set up in addition to the multinational NATO task force that Germany has been leading in Lithuania for more than five years.
NATO has increased its presence on the eastern flank in recent years, especially since the Ukrainian annexation of the Black Sea island of Crimea. In 2017, she began relocating soldiers to the Baltic States and Poland. After the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine at the end of February, NATO decided on four new so-called battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
4:14 p.m .: Ex-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused Germany of “hybrid warfare” against Russia and justified the Russian gas supply stop with Berlin’s “unfriendly” behavior in the Ukraine conflict. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has accused Russia of no longer being a reliable energy supplier, Medvedev wrote on Sunday in the online service Telegram. In fact, it is Germany that is “an unfriendly country,” has imposed sanctions “on the entire Russian economy,” and is supplying “deadly weapons” to Ukraine.
“In other words, Germany has declared a hybrid war on Russia. Germany is behaving like an enemy of Russia,” announced the ex-president and current deputy chairman of the Russian National Security Council. “And this uncle (Scholz) is surprised that the Germans encounter small problems with the gas!” he added ironically. The background to this is the continued suspension of gas deliveries by Nord Stream 1. Both Siemens Energy and the Federal Network Agency sharply reject the justifications for a delivery stop by the Russian operator Gazprom. He argues with maintenance work and an oil leak on the pipeline.
2:24 p.m .: After gas deliveries stopped via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the Kremlin blamed the EU for this. “If the Europeans make an absolutely absurd decision to refuse to maintain their facilities, or rather, facilities owned by Gazprom, then it is not Gazprom’s fault, but the fault of the politicians who made sanctions decisions have,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on the state television program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin,” the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.
According to Peskov, the Europeans are contractually obliged to maintain the plant of the Russian energy giant Gazprom. Politicians are now making sure “that their citizens suffer strokes when they see their electricity bills,” said Peskow, referring to the rapidly increasing energy prices. “Now that it’s getting colder, the situation will get worse.”
Gazprom had announced on Friday evening that it would no longer route gas through the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline, citing a technical defect in the Portovaya compressor station. The group had previously justified a three-day delivery stop from Wednesday to Friday with maintenance work.
1:50 p.m .: Despite the severe tensions with the West, the Kremlin expects that relations will eventually return to normal. “Every confrontation ends with detente, and every crisis situation ends at the negotiating table,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on the state television program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin,” the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday. “That will also be the case this time.” It is likely that it will not happen so quickly, but it will happen.
With the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine on February 24, the West imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow. Even before that, relations were heavily strained.
Russia is an advocate of international harmony based on mutual respect and benefit, Peskov said. Without naming it directly, he accused the United States of pursuing a kind of cowboy approach.
8:21 a.m .: Despite the stop in natural gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the German gas storage facilities have reached a level of 85 percent earlier than expected. This emerges from data on the website of the European gas infrastructure companies on Saturday evening.
The federal government has a fixed plan for the filling levels of German gas storage facilities: 75 percent by September 1st, 85 percent by October 1st and 95 percent by November 1st. Filling the storage facility is considered a crucial element in ensuring that Germany can get through the winter without having to cut off gas.
Sunday, September 4, 8:08 a.m.: The BND has no indication that the Russian President could lose his power in the foreseeable future, said BND President Bruno Kahl of the newspaper “Welt”. And this despite the fact that, according to the BND, Putin actually assumed that the war would last only a few days and end with a regime change in Kyiv.
In the meantime, war has been raging in Ukraine for more than six months – with heavy losses on both sides. According to information from several Western secret services, up to 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and more than 50,000 injured. The Kremlin rarely publishes figures on fallen soldiers. The last official report was in March, at that time there was talk of 1351 dead.
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