Berlin Fighting continues as people flee embattled cities in Ukraine. Ukraine has accused Russia of attacking a maternity hospital in the embattled port city of Mariupol. President Volodymyr Zelensky published a video on Twitter on Wednesday, which is said to show the completely devastated rooms of the clinic.
Accordingly, one or more projectiles or bombs must have hit the courtyard of the clinic complex. The blast destroyed windows, furniture and doors, as can be seen in the video.
The terrain around the building on the Azov Sea in the south-east of the country was littered with rubble. The Ukrainian President spoke of an atrocity: “Russian troops attacked the maternity ward. People, children are under the rubble,” Zelensky wrote.
According to local authorities, several bombs were dropped. That couldn’t be checked. “The destruction is enormous,” said the city council.
17 people were injured, including women in labor, said Donetsk Region Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. Children were recently treated in the clinic.
As a consequence of the attack, Zelensky once again called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. So far, however, NATO has strictly refused to do so.
There was initially no comment from the Russian side. Moscow always emphasizes that it will not attack civilian targets. According to the Ukrainian side, at least 1,170 civilians have been killed in the port city alone since the invasion of Russian troops. “47 were buried in a mass grave today,” a state information agency quoted the city’s deputy mayor Serhii Orlov as saying. the information is not independently verifiable.
But one thing is certain: Mariupol has been besieged by Russian troops for days. Several agreed attempts to get people to safety via escape corridors failed. Both sides blamed each other for this. The Red Cross described the situation there as apocalyptic. There should be a lack of drinking water, food and medicine.
The British government strongly condemned the alleged attack. “There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and helpless,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted on Wednesday. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss spoke of a “disgusting, ruthless and appalling” attack at a press conference following talks with her US counterpart Antony Blinken.
Evacuation of the civilian population under difficult conditions
Kyiv and Moscow wanted to allow hundreds of thousands to flee on day 14 of the war. Russia announced a ceasefire until 8 p.m. CET on Wednesday morning. Ukraine agreed to six escape routes coordinated with Moscow – including from Kyiv.
The destroyed infrastructure also makes it difficult for the refugees to make progress.
(Photo: dpa)
But once again, a large part of the attempts to evacuate civilians via the agreed routes apparently failed. Both sides blamed each other for breaking or failing to comply with planned ceasefires. The information provided by both sides cannot be independently verified.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said: “Russia continues to hold more than 400,000 people hostage in Mariupol, is blocking humanitarian aid and evacuation.” Local authorities in Bucha, a town outside of Kyiv, also reported a failed escape attempt. Accordingly, Russian soldiers prevented a convoy of 50 buses from leaving Bucha.
In other places, however, the evacuation of civilians worked. According to local officials, this was achieved in Sumy in eastern Ukraine and Enerhodar in the south, among other places.
People from Mariupol and Enerhodar were to be taken to Zaporizhia in south-eastern Ukraine. Other routes lead from Volnovakha to Pokrovsk and from Sumy to Poltava. According to Wereshchuk, escape corridors are also planned for the city of Izyum in the east and for several small towns north of Kyiv.
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Russia has rejected a breach of the agreed ceasefire. It was strictly observed, said Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev of the Russian Ministry of Defense on Wednesday in Moscow, according to the state agency TASS.
Rather, he accused Ukraine of shelling Russian positions in the suburbs of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Sumy. This information could not be independently verified.
People flee Irpin via escape corridor
Meanwhile, in his daily televised address, President Zelensky called on the international community to establish a no-fly zone. Russia uses missiles, planes and helicopters “against civilians, against our cities, against our infrastructure”. It is the duty of the world to respond. If she doesn’t do this, according to Selenski, the country faces a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
According to Zelensky’s foreign policy adviser Ihor Zhovkva, Ukraine has not ruled out discussing the country’s possible neutrality in negotiations with Russia. In the ARD “Tagesthemen”, the consultant called for a direct conversation between Selenski and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Military fronts appeared largely static on Wednesday. According to Ukrainian information, there were attacks on several cities again, resulting in deaths and many injuries.
Scholz is on the phone with Putin
The German Chancellor today spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(Photo: Getty Images)
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin again. The top politicians discussed “political-diplomatic efforts” to resolve the conflict, the Kremlin announced on Wednesday in Moscow. The Federal Press Office in Berlin confirmed the call.
The Kremlin also announced that Putin had also spoken to Scholz about Russia’s negotiations with Ukraine. Nothing was communicated from the German side about the content. Both sides last exchanged views in Belarus on Monday, without any significant progress being made known.
In addition, Putin informed Scholz about the rescue measures for civilians in embattled Ukrainian cities, the Kremlin said. Putin accused Ukrainian units of obstructing the evacuations. For its part, Ukraine accuses Russia of shelling the escape corridors. “It was agreed to continue the contacts at different levels,” the Kremlin said in conclusion over the phone call.
EU: Sanctions will be extended
In view of the ongoing war, the EU states have agreed to extend the sanctions against Russia and its partner country Belarus again. As the EU Commission announced in Brussels, 14 more Russian oligarchs and prominent businessmen will be added to the list of those whose assets will be frozen in the EU and who will no longer be allowed to enter the country. In addition, a ban on the export of shipping equipment and the exclusion of three Belarusian banks from the Swift communications network are planned.
Even after a corresponding decision by the USA, the EU states were still unable to agree on the freeze on energy imports from Russia demanded by Ukraine.
No boycott of Russian energy supplies
The federal government sees no further possibility for an immediate boycott of Russian energy supplies along the lines of the USA. The USA is an exporter of gas and oil, which cannot be said for Europe as a whole, stressed Chancellor Scholz in Berlin at a press conference with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “And that’s why the things that can be done are also different.” Fuel prices in Germany continued to rise sharply on Wednesday.
The US on Tuesday banned the import of oil from Russia in response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Great Britain first wants to reduce its oil imports from Russia by the end of the year and then stop importing oil from there.
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Kremlin spokesman Peskov accused the US of waging an economic war against Russia. He emphasized that Russia is a reliable supplier of oil and gas, but at the same time threatened restrictions. “Hostile excesses by the West” made “the situation very complicated and make us think about it intensively,” said Peskov, referring to the massive sanctions against Russia. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Nowak had previously threatened to stop gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Meanwhile, the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag called for gas supplies to be stopped via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. This would “mean a new quality in the sanctions,” said parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz on Wednesday in Berlin.
In view of Russia’s “massive war crimes” in Ukraine, such an escalation is necessary. “It is a restriction of the gas supply of the Federal Republic of Germany,” admitted Merz. “We think that we have to accept that given the situation that has arisen there.”
Dispute over fighter jets for Ukraine
The Polish Foreign Ministry’s proposal to hand over combat aircraft to Ukraine met with rejection from Scholz. He referred to financial aid, humanitarian assistance and the delivery of individual weapon systems. “And otherwise it is the case that we have to think very carefully about what we are actually doing. And that certainly doesn’t include combat aircraft,” said Scholz.
On Tuesday evening, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a plan for the indirect transfer of combat aircraft to Ukraine: the government in Warsaw was prepared to relocate MiG-29 jets to the US Ramstein Air Force base in Rhineland-Palatinate and make them available to the United States place.
The US Department of Defense immediately described the proposal as “unsustainable”. Among other things, it referred to the geopolitical concerns when fighter jets fly from a US or NATO base into contested Ukrainian airspace.
With agency material
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