The situation – Negotiations will continue next week

Dusseldorf Next week, the delegations from Ukraine and Russia want to negotiate personally with each other again. A meeting is planned for Tuesday and Wednesday, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinski, wrote on Telegram on Sunday.

The Ukrainian negotiator David Arachamija also confirmed the meeting on Facebook, but said it would start on Monday. The host country should be Turkey. There was initially no confirmation from the Turkish side.

Shortly after the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began on February 24, delegations from both countries began negotiations. After three face-to-face meetings in the border area of ​​Belarus, the talks were last held in video conferences.

In the negotiations, Ukraine is demanding an end to the war, the withdrawal of Russian troops and new security guarantees. Russia is demanding that Kyiv renounce NATO membership, which recognizes the separatist areas in the east of the country as independent states and Russian rule over the annexed Crimean Peninsula. In addition, Ukraine is to be demilitarized.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the West of lacking courage in supplying its troops with fighter jets and tanks on Sunday. He lamented a “back-and-forth by whom and how (fighter) jets should be handed over” as Russian missile strikes killed civilians in his country.

The United Nations (UN) put the number of civilians who died in the war at at least 1,119. From the beginning of the war to March 26, 1,790 civilians were injured. 99 children were among the dead. The actual number of victims is likely to be considerably higher. Most civilians died from explosive weapons such as artillery fire, rocket attacks and other airstrikes.

Battles for various cities continue

According to Ukrainian observations, the Russian attackers are meanwhile trying to regroup because of allegedly heavy losses. Many Russian associations in Belarus are therefore on the move, the Ukrainian general staff said in its report on Sunday afternoon.

The aim is to replace shrunken associations, to supply supplies of food, fuel and ammunition and to transport wounded and sick soldiers away. The information could not initially be independently verified.

At the same time, it said: “The enemy is continuing its all-out armed aggression against Ukraine.” Russian troops continued to try to take the city of Chernihiv in the north. Fighting continued in the south-east for the cities of Rubishne, Severodonetsk and Mariupol. The General Staff also confirmed the recapture of the important town of Trostjanets near Sumy in the north-east of the country by Ukrainian forces, which was reported on Saturday.

According to information from Moscow, Russian forces have meanwhile destroyed a large fuel depot near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv (formerly Lemberg). The Ukrainian military in the west of the country and near Kyiv was supplied from the fuel depot, said the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, on Sunday in Moscow.

Several military facilities in the Lviv and Kyiv regions were destroyed by rockets fired from planes and warships, the Russian major general said. The Russian statements coincide with Ukrainian statements from Saturday.

The previous day, the regional Ukrainian military administration reported three violent explosions on the eastern outskirts of Lviv. A thick plume of black smoke could be seen in the sky. A fuel depot was hit, said Mayor Andriy Sadowyj.

He spoke of five victims without giving any further details. Civilian infrastructure was not hit. According to the Ukrainian civil defense, the fire in the fuel depot could only be extinguished after 14 hours on Sunday.

Referendum in eastern Ukraine: military intelligence announces guerrilla war

In the capital Kyiv, the war has brought the heating season to an early end. The local military administration ordered this, the city administration announced on Sunday. Apartments and commercial buildings should no longer be heated. For schools, kindergartens, hospitals and cultural institutions, switching off is regulated in consultation with their managers.

Temperatures of one to three degrees are expected in Kyiv in the coming nights. The heating season in the district heating network usually ends in mid-April. The city administration pointed out that the infrastructure of the megacity was working despite the war. Emergency teams worked around the clock to repair damage to electricity, heating or water networks.

Meanwhile, there are discussions about a possible referendum in the occupied areas of the country on joining Russia. However, Ukraine has made it clear that it will not recognize them: “All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void and will have no legal validity,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters on Sunday.

The spokesman was reacting to statements made by a separatist leader. “I think that in the near future a referendum will be held on the territory of the republic,” local leader Leonid Pasechnik previously said, according to local media. “People will exercise their ultimate constitutional right and express their opinions about joining the Russian Federation.”

Shortly before invading Ukraine in February, Russia recognized the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in the eastern Ukrainian separatist region as independent. The Minsk Agreement negotiated in 2014 thus lost its validity, and Putin started the war on Kyiv under the pretext of an alleged Ukrainian attack on the areas.

After more than a month of war, Moscow has not managed to conquer the whole country, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, said on Sunday. Therefore, attempts are now being made to create a region controlled by Russia.

Budanov announced that Ukraine would soon start a guerrilla war in the Russian-occupied territories. “Then there will be only one relevant scenario for the Russians, and that is how they can survive,” he said of the referendum announcement.

Germany discusses missile defense shield

The now changed security situation in Europe has triggered discussions in Germany about a missile protection shield. “We need to protect ourselves better against the threat from Russia. For this we need a Germany-wide anti-missile shield,” said Andreas Schwarz (SPD), the main rapporteur on the budget committee for the defense budget, of the “Bild am Sonntag”. “The Israeli system “Arrow 3″ is a good solution.”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Bundeswehr Inspector General Eberhard Zorn discussed on Wednesday how the 100 billion euro special fund should be used to strengthen the troops. The newspaper reported that it was also about a possible purchase of the Israeli “Arrow 3” system. However, a decision has not yet been made.

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When asked, the Ministry of Defense stated that the draft of the corresponding economic plan was currently being drawn up and included in the ongoing parliamentary process. “Therefore, no information can be given about its exact content at the moment,” said a spokeswoman. According to information from the German Press Agency, defense politicians in the Bundestag wanted to travel to Israel on Sunday and find out about air defense systems there by Thursday.

The “Arrow” system is capable of destroying incoming long-range ballistic missiles while operating very high above the earth, right into the stratosphere. That would be a new capability for the Bundeswehr.

Germany and Poland want greater distribution of refugees

In view of the large number of refugees from Ukraine, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) and her Polish colleague Mariusz Kaminski have appealed to the EU Commission for help.

In a letter to Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas and Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson, the two urge more support in distributing the refugees to the other EU countries, as well as financial help.

For example, a lump sum of 1000 euros from EU funds for each admitted person is brought into play and more coordination in the distribution of refugees is called for. On Monday, the interior ministers of the EU states want to discuss how to deal with the refugees in Brussels.

According to the UN refugee agency, more than 3.8 million people have fled the country since the start of the Russian war against Ukraine. More than two million have arrived in Poland alone, and according to the Ministry of the Interior around 267,000 refugees have been registered in Germany.

With agency material.

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