US ministers expected in Kyiv – dead in rocket fire from Odessa

Kyiv, Moscow After trips by numerous top European politicians, a high-ranking US visit is expected in Kyiv on Sunday. “I don’t think it’s a big secret. Tomorrow I will have a meeting with US Secretary of Defense (Lloyd Austin) and Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.

At least eight people, including a three-month-old girl, died in a Russian missile attack on the port city of Odessa, according to Ukrainian sources.

Zelenski announced that he would talk to Austin and Blinken about the “list of necessary weapons and the speed of their delivery”. The US ministries initially did not comment on the trips. In the past few weeks, various European heads of government and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have visited Kyiv.

Selenski said he hoped the US would also support arms deliveries from Germany. “So that they (Germany) start delivering what they have and what they are not using.” In the traffic light coalition, there is pressure from the Greens and FDP on SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz to expand arms deliveries.

On Saturday, the FDP also called for the delivery of heavy weapons from Germany to Ukraine in a resolution at its federal party conference. The country must be supported quickly and effectively in repelling the Russian war of aggression, it said.

Zelensky accuses Russia of building concentration camps

The Russian military attacked the Ukrainian port city of Odessa on Saturday, which had so far been largely spared from attacks. According to Zelensky, seven rockets were initially fired, two of which were intercepted. Among other things, a multi-storey residential building was hit, in addition to eight dead, up to 20 people were injured.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it hit a logistics terminal at a military airfield that was storing a “large shipment” of weapons from the US and Europe. According to their own statements, Ukrainian troops intercepted two more cruise missiles on Sunday night.

In his daily video address, Zelensky sharply criticized the filtration camps set up by the Russian military in occupied territories. According to the official statement, possible fighters are to be separated from civilians in them. “The honest name for this is different – these are concentration camps. Just like the Nazis built them back then,” said Zelenski.

He criticized the fact that Ukrainians from these camps were also being taken to Russia. “Among other things, they are deporting children – in the hope that they will forget where they come from, where their home is.” According to the Ukrainian human rights commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova, 308 Ukrainians were transferred from the badly damaged Mariupol to a city in the Russian Far East, 8000 kilometers away brought.

Ukraine speaks of forced conscription in occupied territories

Ukraine also accuses Russian troops of forced conscription of residents in occupied territories. In addition to young people, doctors in the Cherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions are also particularly affected, the Ukrainian military intelligence wrote on Facebook. For example, medical personnel from the city of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region were forced, under threat of execution, to treat Russian soldiers at the front.

In the Zaporizhia region, the Russian military and secret service agents were looking for people of draft age, the military intelligence continued. It is said that they should reinforce Russian units. The information could not be independently verified.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is concerned about employees who have been captured in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine. The organization announced that these were Ukrainians who were working in the region together with international observers from the OSCE. At the end of February, the OSCE decided to temporarily end its mission in the face of the Russian invasion and to evacuate its unarmed international team.

The main task of the observers was to monitor the ceasefire line between state troops and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

More Handelsblatt articles on the war in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended an Easter service in Moscow on Sunday night. According to tradition, he presented the Russian Orthodox Church leader, Patriarch Kirill, with a decorated Easter egg, the Tass news agency reported. Kirill has always backed Putin’s policies. He blamed the West for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. In Ukraine, there is a curfew during the Orthodox Easter Vigil.

On the occasion of the celebration, the Ukrainian President Zelensky gave his compatriots hope of victory. It was only a matter of time before everyone in Ukraine would be safe and peaceful again, he said in a video address.

Merz: German foreign and security policy in front of a shambles

With regard to the war in Ukraine, the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz sees years of serious failures in German politics. “The entire German foreign and security policy of the last 20 years is in ruins. When this war is over, we have to carefully analyze how it came about,” Merz told the “Bild am Sonntag”. From the point of view of the CDU leader, by 2014 at the latest after the occupation of Crimea “massive sanctions and isolation of Russia would have been needed”.

That will be important on Sunday

A highlight of the day is likely to be the visit of the two US ministers to Kyiv, details of which have not yet been released. In Germany, one can assume that the debate about German arms deliveries and the foreign policy course towards Russia will continue.

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