One day after the rocket attacks in the port of Odessa, Moscow justified the internationally criticized attack with the destruction of US weapons. The missiles were fired at a ship repair facility, the Defense Ministry said in Moscow on Sunday. A Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with US-supplied Harpoon missiles were destroyed in the dock, sources said.
Despite the attack, Lavrov reaffirmed the validity of the international agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea. The passage through a sea corridor should be monitored by a control center in Istanbul, he said on a visit to the Egyptian capital Cairo on Sunday. Representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations are said to be working there. Russian and Turkish forces would work together to ensure the safety of the ships on the open sea, Lavrov said. He later spoke of a third party, not yet named, that would be involved in the controls.
In Egypt, Russia’s chief diplomat made a name for himself with statements about a planned overthrow of the Ukrainian government that had not previously been heard from Moscow with such openness. “We will definitely help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the absolutely anti-people and anti-history regime,” he said. The Russian and Ukrainian people would henceforth live together.
In the past few days, the Russian leadership has publicly tightened its position on the Ukraine war. On Wednesday, Lavrov threatened to occupy other areas outside of the Donbass. In view of the western supply of arms and their longer range, it is necessary to further push the Kiev troops away from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow has recognized as independent. With the current announcement of a planned regime change in Kyiv, Lavrov contradicted earlier statements. In April he had denied such plans.
Kyiv immediately returned the accusation of the “anti-history regime” to the addressee. “Only those who do not know the real story and do not feel its importance could choose to attack us,” Zelenskyy replied in his video address in the evening. For centuries, Ukrainians have been oppressed and will never give up their independence.
According to the president, maintaining national unity is now the most important task for Ukrainians in order to win the war and become a member of the European Union. “Preserving unity now, working together for victory, is the most important national task that we must tackle together,” he said.
If the Ukrainians can do this, they will succeed in what generations before had failed to do. To preserve independence from Russia, to transform itself into one of the most modern countries in the world and at the same time to go its own way towards Europe, which according to Zelenskyj will end with full membership of the EU.
Ukraine has announced initial successes in the planned reconquest of the Cherson region occupied by Russia. “We can say that a turning point has been reached on the battlefield,” Serhiy Khlan of the pro-Kyiv Kherson military administration said in a TV interview on Sunday. “We see our forces advancing openly,” Chlan added.
The Ukrainian troops would switch from the defensive to the counter-offensive. Chlan said that Kherson would be “definitely liberated by September”. Accordingly, the Ukrainians are preparing a ground offensive.
Supported by artillery supplies from the west, the Ukrainian army has gained ground in the southern Ukrainian region in recent weeks. Russian troops captured the capital of Cherson on March 3rd. The region is important to Ukraine’s agriculture and is close to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger has advised Ukraine and the West not to cede post-war occupied territories in negotiations with Russia. Those responsible in the West would have to draw borders beforehand, “and giving up Ukrainian territory shouldn’t be one of the conditions that we can accept,” said Kissinger, according to a translation on Sunday in the ZDF “heute journal”. Before negotiating, you have to be clear about what you are willing to negotiate and what you are not willing to reveal under any circumstances.
Because of the stagnation in arms deliveries via ring exchange, the FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann is now also open to the direct delivery of German tanks to the Ukraine. The Chair of the Defense Committee of the Bundestag admits that the Eastern European allies have not been able to find replacements for their arms deliveries to Ukraine as quickly as expected.
“If that is problematic for the partners, we should stop the ring exchange and deliver directly to Ukraine – possibly also the (main battle tank) Leopard 2. Time is short,” said Strack-Zimmermann of the German Press Agency.
Before Vladimir Putin went into politics and became Russian President, he had already worked for the KGB for many years. A German publicist and expert on the Russian secret service shows how this time shaped him.
According to information from Kyiv, more than 1,000 Russian soldiers have been surrounded by Ukrainian forces in the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Cherson. Russia, on the other hand, reports the downing of four Himars systems, which Ukraine contradicts. Two US citizens die in Donbass. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found in the ticker.
Moscow has justified its attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov speaks of a planned “regime change” in Ukraine. Kyiv announces progress in the struggle for the occupied Kherson region. An overview of the developments during the night and an outlook for the day.