Situation in the evening – Russia wants to increase troops

Dusseldorf US President Joe Biden visited eastern NATO member Poland on the 30th day of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Just 90 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Biden first met with US soldiers stationed in Poland in the city of Rzeszow on Friday.

The US President said the conflict is about more than helping the people of Ukraine and stopping the “massacres”. The question is whether democracies or autocracies will prevail in global competition.

With the visit to Poland, Biden wants to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank. On Friday he wanted to meet with the Polish head of state Andrzej Duda. However, his plane had to return to Warsaw due to damage. There Duda changed to a replacement aircraft. The US President wants to give a speech in Warsaw this Saturday.

In response to the NATO deployment on the eastern flank, Russia announced that it would increase its troops on the western border. Because of the war, NATO had activated its defense plans and placed 40,000 soldiers on the eastern flank under the direct command of the alliance.

The situation in the negotiations

According to a Russian negotiator, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have so far only made rapprochement on secondary issues. “However, we are standing still on the core political issues,” quoted the Interfax news agency as Vladimir Medinsky, a member of the Russian delegation. It had been negotiated all week via video switching. The talks would continue on Saturday.

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The Ukrainian side was also disillusioned. The peace talks have been difficult, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba.

Kuleba also denied optimistic statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the progress of the talks. Erdogan had previously said Russia and Ukraine could agree on four out of six main issues discussed in their talks.

The military situation

Four weeks after invading Ukraine, faced with massive problems, Russia seems to be changing its tactics and focusing on the east and south-east of the country. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that the army controls 93 percent of the Luhansk region and 54 percent of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

“The main goal of the first phase of the operation has been achieved,” said Sergei Rudskoy of the Russian high command. The Ukrainian forces have been weakened to such an extent that the liberation of the Donets Basin (Donbass) can now be tackled. According to Western military experts, the Russian armed forces are also reacting to the faltering advances on larger cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv.

The United States also believes that Russia is shifting the focus of its military operations in Ukraine away from the capital Kyiv to the Donbass in the east of the country. With this, Russia could try to cut off Ukrainian troops there from the rest of the country and strengthen its position in negotiations, says a senior US military official. Russia is also trying to send reinforcements from Georgia to Ukraine.

The Russian army has admitted that 1,351 Russian soldiers have been killed in the attack on Ukraine so far. 3,825 were injured, the Russian agency Interfax reported, citing the Ministry of Defense.

According to Western security circles, however, Russian losses are many times higher than these numbers. In total, tens of thousands are said to have died in the Russian attacks. The information cannot be independently verified.

The possible change in strategy by Russia could also be related to the fact that the Russian army was able to gain territory in the south and east after invading Ukraine, but is encountering increasing problems on other front sections. According to British information, Ukrainian troops have recaptured towns and defensive positions up to 35 kilometers east of Kyiv.

However, according to local authorities, the small town of Slavutych north of Kyiv was surrounded by Russian troops. Workers who are involved in the maintenance of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant live in Slavutych.

According to US information, Russia also has massive problems with its precision-guided missiles. The high-tech weapons used in the attack on Ukraine had a failure rate of up to 60 percent, US government officials told the Reuters news agency, citing intelligence information.

According to a Russian agency report, the Russian Defense Ministry also announced that a large fuel depot near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv had been destroyed by rocket fire.

The humanitarian situation

The Ukrainian government hoped that an escape corridor would be opened up for the encircled port of Mariupol. It will be open to civilians who can leave the city in a private vehicle. Mariupol, once populated by 400,000, is one of the Ukrainian cities hardest hit by Russian attacks.

According to their own statements, the observers of the UN human rights team in Ukraine are increasingly receiving information about mass graves in Mariupol. 200 bodies are said to lie in a grave, said the leader of the observer group, Matilda Bogner. More than 1035 civilians were killed in the city.

What else was important

Once again, the EU summit did not give Ukraine a commitment to join, but in a resolution on Friday night only “Ukraine’s European aspirations and European decision” were emphasized. The summit decided to set up an international reconstruction fund for Ukraine. There should be an international donor conference for this. The aim is to rebuild a democratic Ukraine.

Against the background of the Ukraine war, the Bundestag passed a law to secure the gas reserve. The governing parties SPD, Greens and FDP, with the support of the Union, approved regulations for minimum storage levels at certain times of the year on Friday.

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In this way, Germany wants to avoid that the storage facilities are low, as was the case this winter, and that this poses a risk to the supply. The law stipulates that the storage tanks must be 80 percent full by the beginning of October. It must be 90 percent at the beginning of November and at least 40 percent in February.

Germany needs Russian gas for more than two years and therefore continues to resist an energy import ban. “Independence from Russian gas can be largely achieved in a joint effort by the summer of 2024,” according to a paper published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs on Friday. However, this requires savings and the use of hydrogen.

Habeck confirms rejection of an energy embargo

Then you still need ten percent of the demand from Russia. At the same time as the EU summit, Minister Robert Habeck once again opposed calls for an energy embargo. But Germany is trying to become more independent quickly, said the Green politician.

Germany intends to do without Russian coal by autumn and oil by the end of the year, he confirmed earlier plans. When it comes to gas, Europe is getting support from the USA: the country has agreed additional liquefied gas supplies with the EU.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) plays a key role in the German economy minister’s plans to reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible.

According to Habeck, the federal government has secured access to “three floating LNG terminals that the companies RWE and Uniper have optioned on behalf of the federal government”.

In industry circles it was said that it was not yet certain whether it would actually be possible to get three floating terminals in the end. It might just end up being two.

LNG terminals to reduce dependency on Russian gas

Germany could have access to liquid gas via floating LNG terminals. So far, Germany has not been able to import this energy source itself. Rather, it has to be processed by LNG terminals in Belgium or the Netherlands and routed to Germany via the European long-distance gas network.

The energy relief package put together this week will account for 17 billion euros in the federal budget for 2022. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) said on Friday in the Bundestag. This roughly corresponds to the volume of the first relief package for companies and citizens from February.

In the supplementary budget, Lindner wants to reflect the consequences of the war in Ukraine. In addition to the energy burdens, there is help for refugees and for companies that are now in trouble.

With agency material

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