Ukraine conflict: negotiations continue

Dusseldorf The French judiciary has launched investigations against unknown persons on suspicion of war crimes in Ukraine. The three procedures started on Tuesday are about actions that are said to have been directed against French citizens.

The responsible anti-terror prosecutor in Paris said that it was specifically about psychological assaults, deliberate attacks on uninvolved civilians, the confiscation of vital goods or the destruction and confiscation of civilian goods. The incidents are said to have happened in Mariupol, Hostomel and Chernihiv.
After the death of a Franco-Irish journalist in Ukraine, the French judiciary began investigating war crimes. France can only investigate war crimes abroad if they have been committed by a national or a person with primary residence in France, or have been directed against a French national.

The United Nations also wants its own human rights experts to investigate the killing of several hundred civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha. This was announced by a spokeswoman for the UN human rights office in Geneva on Tuesday.

A team from the UN office with around 50 employees is currently stationed in Uzhgorod in western Ukraine, around 800 kilometers from the capital Kyiv and the suburb of Bucha. A date was not mentioned.

Ukraine and western countries accuse Russian soldiers of having committed atrocities against civilians in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, among other places. Russia rejects this. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said of the evidence presented for the alleged crimes: “They were fabricated for a lot of money.”

The commercial satellite operator Maxar Technologies presented images that are said to have shown bodies during the Russian occupation. In an email to the Reuters news agency, the company said these showed that the dead had been lying on the streets for weeks. Reuters reporters in Bucha saw several bodies that appeared to have been shot at close range. It was not possible to determine who was responsible for the killings.

Later in the day, the UN Security Council was due to deal with ongoing allegations of war crimes by Russian soldiers. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should be involved.

According to a media report, the Ukrainian and Russian governments are continuing to negotiate. The negotiations are therefore conducted via video link. The Interfax news agency referred to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Other recent reports on the war:

Meanwhile, the Kremlin announced that a summit meeting between Presidents Zelensky and Vladimir Putin would only take place if an agreement between the two countries had been negotiated beforehand. Selenski is skeptical about the chances of direct talks. However, there is no alternative to negotiations. According to an EU spokesman, Selenski wants to meet EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Kyiv in the course of the week. Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer will also travel to Ukraine.

In a televised address this morning, Zelensky said his country needed security guarantees because Russia could return in two years. In the coming decade, Ukraine will become a kind of “big Israel” with defense as the top priority, he announced.

EU Commission wants embargo on coal and chemicals from Russia

The EU Commission is apparently proposing tighter sanctions against Russia, which should also include a coal import embargo. The Reuters news agency learned this on Tuesday from a person familiar with the matter. Bloomberg also confirms the new sanctions.

In addition, the import of wood, cement, rubber, chemicals and luxury foods such as caviar and spirits such as vodka should be banned, the insider said on Tuesday. This includes a total volume of five billion euros per year.

Russian trucks and ships should also no longer be allowed into the EU. The export of semiconductors, high-tech machines, certain liquid gas technology and other equipment should also be banned accordingly. The export ban has a volume of ten billion euros.

The military situation

Meanwhile, the course of the war continued to focus on the east and south. The government in Kyiv says it expects around 60,000 Russian reservists to be deployed in the east.

According to Zelensky, the situation in the besieged port city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine was “very difficult”. Several attempts by the International Committee of the Red Cross to evacuate civilians have been unsuccessful in recent days.

To date, the #Federal Police 309,868 #Refugees from the #Ukraine found in Germany. Most of them are women, children and old people. pic.twitter.com/iv843q1gkl

— Federal Ministry of the Interior and Homeland (@BMI_Bund) April 5, 2022

For this Tuesday, however, Ukraine has again announced the establishment of a total of seven escape corridors for the evacuation of civilians. However, residents of the besieged port city of Mariupol can only leave in private cars, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, according to the Ukrinform agency.

She also accused the Russian troops of continuing to block access to Mariupol for aid convoys, contrary to their promises. Kyiv and Moscow have been accusing each other of sabotaging civilian escapes for weeks.

According to Vereshchuk, Red Cross workers who are believed to have been held in the town of Manhush west of Mariupol have since been released. The Red Cross should start a new attempt on Tuesday to bring people in buses to the city of Zaporizhia.

According to the British Ministry of Defence, Ukrainian forces have recaptured important areas in the north of the country. Russia was forced to withdraw from areas north of Kyiv, it said, citing military intelligence.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said nearly 20,000 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine since the February 24 invasion. He did not provide any evidence. By way of comparison, the United States lost around 2,500 soldiers in the two-decade war in Afghanistan, according to data from Brown University.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense expects further Russian attacks on the besieged city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. Russian troops were preparing to take the city, Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksander Motusianyk said, according to Ukrayinska Pravda. Russian troops also received reinforcements in other areas in eastern Ukraine.

The number of refugees in Germany is increasing

Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, around 2.5 million people have fled to safety in Poland. However, the number of new arrivals is falling significantly, as the Polish border guard announced on Twitter on Tuesday. Accordingly, there were 18,500 people on Monday. That was a decrease of 17 percent compared to the previous day.

There is currently no official information on how many of the war refugees stayed in Poland and how many have already traveled on to other EU countries. Ukraine – the largest country in Europe by area – had more than 44 million inhabitants before the start of the Russian attack, Poland 38 million. The two states are linked by a border more than 500 kilometers long.

The number of refugees from Ukraine in Germany is also increasing, albeit not as rapidly as two weeks ago. As the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced on Twitter on Tuesday, the Federal Police recorded a total of 309,868 war refugees since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression on February 24 – mostly women, children and old people.

Within 24 hours, 3032 new arrivals were added. It can be assumed that the actual number of refugees is higher, as there are no fixed controls at the borders and people with Ukrainian passports can stay in the EU for 90 days without a visa.
With agency material
More: All developments in the Ukraine war in the Newsblog