Russia is approaching the EU border

Dusseldorf Russian forces attacked a military training area in western Ukraine on Sunday morning, bringing their offensive closer to the border with Poland. According to Ukrainian sources, 35 people were killed. 134 others were injured. Russia has fired around 30 rockets at the base 30 kilometers northwest of Lviv, regional governor Maxym Kozytskyi said.

The shooting range is located a few kilometers from the Ukrainian-Polish border. Since 2015, the United States has regularly sent instructors to the field to train the Ukrainian military, and the facility has also been the scene of international NATO exercises. It is also known as the “International Center for Peacekeeping and Security” in Yavoriv.

Foreign military instructors have been working at the military base, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. However, it is not clear whether they were there at the time of the attack. “This is a new terrorist attack on peace and security near the EU-NATO border,” Reznikov tweeted.

The area around the western Ukrainian metropolis of Lviv (Lemberg) has been shaken by multiple explosions for the first time since the war began more than two weeks ago. An air alert was sounded in the city and people were asked to stay in shelters. The explosions could also be heard in Poland, as a reporter from the German Press Agency from Przemysl reported.

The area around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv is also still hotly contested. The Ukrainian military announced on Sunday morning that there was fighting in Irpin and Makariv in the Kyiv region. The situation is similar in other villages, the humanitarian situation is getting worse and worse. On Saturday alone, around 20,000 people were evacuated from Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel and Worsel northwest of Kyiv. The rescue of civilians should continue.

According to the city administration of Kyiv, they have stocks of food for two weeks in reserve in case of a blockade by Russian troops. Residents of Kyiv who have not yet left their homes and the city “will not be left without support if the situation worsens,” an online statement said.

According to the authorities, several people were killed in Russian attacks on the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv. “Nine people died as a result of bombing by assholes,” wrote the governor of Mykolaiv region Vitaly Kim on Sunday in the Telegram news service. The information could not be verified. The city with almost 500,000 inhabitants has been hotly contested for days. If Russian troops manage to bypass or capture Mykolayiv, they would be able to cross land to the important southwestern Ukrainian port of Odessa.

According to a Ukrainian military report, several explosions were also heard in the Ivano-Frankivsk region in south-western Ukraine on Sunday night. The mayor wrote on Facebook about attacks on an air force base. The airport had been the destination for the third time.

“I beg you, be as careful as possible and take care of yourselves,” Ruslan Martsinkiv appealed to the residents of his city. He had previously urged residents near the airport to leave the area if possible.

According to the Ukrainian army, there were also attacks in the north-east in the area around the city of Sumy. “Peaceful villages” had been shot at several times. None of the information has been independently verified.

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According to Ukrainian information, around 13,000 people were evacuated from several cities in the country on Saturday. That’s almost twice as many as on Friday, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereschuk. However, nobody managed to leave the besieged city of Mariupol. Of the 14 agreed corridors, only nine were passable. There should be another attempt on Sunday.

Another 14 escape corridors are planned to rescue civilians. A convoy with several tons of relief supplies is to try again to reach the besieged port city of Mariupol, Wereshchuk said on Sunday. This also included empty buses that were supposed to transport residents from the badly damaged city to Zaporizhia on the way back. The convoy was to be accompanied by clerics.

So far, all attempts to set up an escape corridor for Mariupol have failed. Both sides blame each other.

The settlement of Polohy between Mariupol and Zaporizhia should also be evacuated, as well as several places in the west, north and north-east of the capital Kyiv and in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

Zelensky threatens Ukrainian supporters of Russia

President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, accused Russia of wanting to divide his country and of ushering in “a new phase of terror” with the alleged arrest of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol. “Ukraine will pass this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our country,” he said in his evening address to the nation on Saturday.

At the same time, Zelensky threatened possible collaborators and supporters of Russia in Ukraine. Those who are tempted by offers from the Russian occupiers are signing their own verdict: “The verdict is to follow more than 12,000 occupiers who could not understand in time why Ukraine should not be attacked.”

Most recently, the Ukrainian side said that more than 12,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war in Ukraine. This cannot be verified independently. Ukrainian forces have inflicted the largest casualties on the Russian army in decades, Zelensky said. 31 Russian battalions were put out of action. Now Moscow is sending new troops.

In his statements, Zelensky referred to recent events in the Russian-occupied territories of the Kherson region in the south of the country. There, Russia is trying to “repeat the sad experience of creating pseudo-republics”, blackmailing local politicians, putting pressure on MPs and looking for someone to bribe to create a “Kherson People’s Republic”.

According to the authorities, another mayor has been abducted by Russian troops in southern Ukraine. “War crimes are becoming more and more systematic,” wrote the head of the military administration of the Zaporizhia region, Olexander Starukh, on Facebook on Sunday. “The mayor of Dniprorudne, Yevhenij Matwjejew, was kidnapped.” Dniprorudne is a small town with almost 20,000 inhabitants on the river Dnipro, which is dammed at this point to form the Kakhovka reservoir.

Kyiv had previously announced that the mayor of the city of Melitopol had been kidnapped. In his place, the Russian troops appointed a Moscow-born politician as governor. Observers do not rule out that Russia, under the pretext of “denazification” of Ukraine, will also change administrations in other conquered areas. The Kremlin claims that “Nazis” are in charge in Kyiv. The Ukrainian President Zelensky has Jewish roots.

Zelensky on the phone with the Israeli prime minister

On Saturday evening, Zelensky called Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett again. “The conversation, which lasted more than an hour, discussed ways to end the fighting in Ukraine and Israel’s efforts on the matter,” Bennett’s office said.

Israel Radio also reported on Sunday that Zelenskiy had asked Bennett to lobby for the release of the mayor of Melitopol and other Ukrainian officials.

Zelenskiy previously suggested Jerusalem as a possible location for negotiations to end the war with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both Selenskyj and Putin had recently repeatedly telephoned Bennett, who had personally met the Kremlin boss in Moscow a week ago.

This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the Ukraine war:

Britain: Russian troops pay heavy price

Ukrainian forces across the country continue to put up steadfast resistance to Russia, according to reports from Britain. The Russian forces therefore paid a high price for every advance, the British Ministry of Defense wrote on Sunday in its regular intelligence update on the situation in the Ukraine war.

Russia is trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in the east of the country while advancing from Kharkiv to the north and Mariupol to the south, the British said. Those Russian forces advancing from the southern Crimean peninsula wanted to avoid the large city of Mykolaiv while looking for opportunities to push west towards Odessa.

Meanwhile, Italy suffered a tragic accident involving Ukrainian refugees. According to the fire department, a bus with around 50 Ukrainians on board went off the road. One person died and several others were injured. The accident happened on the north-east coast on a road between Cesena and Rimini. Photos firefighters posted on Twitter show a bus overturning.

Germany donates food to Ukraine

More than 440 tons of donated food have now been brought to the Ukraine via a newly established coordination center of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Berlin. Since the initiative started about a week ago, around 20 truckloads with almost 700 pallets have been driven, according to data from the ministry. Accordingly, basic foodstuffs, water, juice, baby food and canned fish and meat are mainly delivered. The products were donated by several German retail and food companies.

The aid supplies will be transported to Ukraine via transshipment points in Poland and will then be taken by Ukrainian authorities to the cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol, which have been severely affected by the war, it said. According to the ministry, 90 truckloads with almost 3,000 pallets have already been promised, including the delivered goods.

The federal coordination office for commercial donations was set up to bring together inquiries from Ukraine and offers.
With agency material

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