At the end of her term in office, former chancellor Angela Merkel no longer saw any possibility of influencing Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a report in Der Spiegel. During her farewell visit to Moscow in August 2021, she had the feeling: “In terms of power politics, you’re through. Only power counts for Putin,” the magazine quoted from a conversation with Merkel.
Merkel also said that the Minsk agreement, which was supposed to prevent a escalating war between Russia and Ukraine in 2014, was “eroded” by 2021. In the summer of 2021, she and French President Emmanuel Macron tried in vain to arrange an EU meeting with Putin. In terms of foreign policy, she had “not progressed a millimeter. Not only as far as Ukraine is concerned. Transnistria and Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia, Syria and Libya.” It was time for a new approach.
She was in agreement with the then US President Barack Obama in his assessment of Putin. “After Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), we tried everything to prevent further Russian attacks on Ukraine and coordinated our sanctions in detail,” Merkel is quoted as saying. She had been publicly criticized in recent weeks for not admitting any mistakes in Russia policy over the past 16 years.
The Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022 ended a “euphoric phase” in history. “Today we are faced with a world that is again full of complications,” said Merkel. “History does not repeat itself, but I fear that patterns do repeat themselves. The horror disappears with the eyewitnesses. But the spirit of reconciliation also disappears.”
In the conversation, Merkel praised the resistance of the Ukrainians. She believes that Germany shouldn’t be the first nation to send state-of-the-art tanks because “you can still make a good atmosphere with Germany” in Russia. At the same time, she expressed respect for Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. On the open stage, he refused to support Putin’s war. “It takes, I think, such a man incredible strength to assert himself against Russia.” Something is happening in Central Asia with a view to Russia. At the same time, Merkel warned against making too high demands on foreign policy. “We have to be careful that we don’t set our bar so high that in the end nobody is left who can still meet our standards.”
Lithuania wants to help Ukraine rebuild energy infrastructure after heavy Russian rocket attacks. This is “just as important” as the delivery of weapons, said Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, according to the BNS agency in Vilnius.
Russia has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine for nine months. After military setbacks, Moscow increasingly relies on the destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. “They try to make life difficult for people. Of course, this is a deliberate tactic by Russia,” said Simonyte.
According to the Ministry of Energy, Lithuania has already provided material funds worth EUR 3 million to restore the destroyed energy infrastructure. Further aid worth two million euros is to follow shortly.
Russia and Ukraine are said to be swapping prisoners of war again. The Defense Ministry in Moscow and the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office Andryj Yermak each say that the other side has transferred 50 military personnel. Yermak says 19 of the Ukrainians released are Mariupol defenders. More than 1000 prisoners have been exchanged since the beginning of the war.
According to estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA), it will not be this winter but the next that will pose major challenges for Europe. One is relatively well prepared for the winter, the reservoirs are full, says IEA boss Fatih Birol in Berlin.
The situation will be different in the coming year given the likely suspension of Russian gas supplies and an upswing in the Chinese economy. The European Union (EU) must now prepare for this. A possible solution is the joint procurement of gas by the EU.
According to their own statements, the authorities have discovered torture chambers and killed civilians in the part of the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson liberated by Russian troops. “The bodies of 432 civilians who were murdered were found,” said Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin on television on Thursday. The 49-year-old did not provide any further information.
In addition, nine rooms designated as torture chambers were discovered. A total of twelve investigative teams are active in the heavily mined area.
Barely a day after nationwide Russian rocket attacks, the water supply in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv has been restored. “But it will take a while for the water pipe system to work at full capacity again,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned on Thursday on the Telegram news channel. In high-rise buildings in particular, the water pressure is not always sufficient.
The day before, after a massive attack on the infrastructure, the water supply in the city of three million had collapsed completely due to power failures. The district heating system also failed in many parts of the city, along with electricity, the Internet and the mobile network. On Thursday afternoon, parts of the capital were without electricity.
According to the Russian government, it does not want to supply oil and gas to countries that support the planned upper limit for Russian oil. However, a final decision will only be made once all the data has been analyzed, says the spokesman for the President’s Office, Dmitry Peskov.
The G7 are considering a price cap for Russian oil to between $65 and $70 a barrel.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak has suggested that Germany should supply the Patriot air defense system to Ukraine, not his country. “After new Russian missile attacks, I asked the German side to transfer the Patriot battery offered to Poland to Ukraine and to set it up on the western border,” Blaszczak said on Twitter on Wednesday evening. In this way, Ukraine will be protected from new losses and power failures and the security of the common border will be strengthened.
After a missile hit Poland’s border area with Ukraine, the German government offered to support NATO partner Poland with the Patriot missile defense system at the beginning of the week. According to NATO and Poland, the impact was probably caused by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.
The Patriot system is used to counter aircraft, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. It is based on the interaction of several radar devices that pass on information about approaching missiles to guided missiles; these should then destroy the projectile in the air.
The military leadership in Kyiv has welcomed the proposal. “Why should they be in Poland? You can set them up in the western part of Ukraine,” Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on television on Thursday.
Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht reacted cautiously. The Patriots are part of NATO’s integrated air defense and intended for NATO territory, said the SPD politician. “And if they are deployed outside of NATO territory, then that must be discussed with NATO and the Allies beforehand.”
The three Ukrainian nuclear power plants that were disconnected from the power grid after Russian attacks have come back online. It was possible to reconnect the three plants controlled by Ukraine in the morning, the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy announced on Thursday in the online service Telegram. The nuclear power plants should therefore be able to supply electricity again from the evening.
On Wednesday, the state operator Energoatom explained on Telegram that the emergency system of the three nuclear power plants Rivne, Pivdennoukrainsk and Khmelnytska had been activated as a result of the Russian shelling. As a result, all reactors were automatically disconnected from the power grid.
The morning after the heavy Russian rocket attacks, around 70 percent of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv are still without electricity. The repair work was in full swing. According to Mayor Klitschko, it was at least possible to supply some parts of the city with water again.
According to insiders from the Reuters news agency, representatives of Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week and discussed the possibility of a prisoner swap. In exchange, Russia could be allowed to export ammonia, which is used in the manufacture of fertilizers, say three people familiar with the negotiations. It was initially not clear whether progress had been made in the talks brokered by the Gulf state.
According to British estimates, Russia has relocated large parts of its airborne units to eastern Ukraine. Potential areas of application are the defense positions in the area around the cities of Swatowe and Kreminna in the Luhansk region or in the ongoing Russian offensive against the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, the Ministry of Defense in London said on Thursday, citing intelligence findings. In September and October, the troops were deployed to defend west of the Dnipro River in the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson.
According to British information, some of the severely weakened airborne units (WDW) were reinforced with mobilized reservists. “Although these poorly trained personnel will dilute WDW’s supposedly elite capabilities, Russia will likely still assign these units to sectors deemed particularly important,” the London statement said.
The Russian airborne troops are considered an elite unit and represent a separate branch of the armed forces. At the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine nine months ago, they were supposed to conquer the capital Kyiv together with ground troops, but were repulsed.
Hungary is providing 187 million euros for an EU-planned aid package for Ukraine. This emerges from a decree published late Wednesday evening. The Hungarian government had said it wanted to help Ukraine financially, but would do so bilaterally rather than as part of EU aid. The EU has promised Ukraine up to 18 billion euros for 2023. A few days ago, Prime Minister Viktor Orban angered Ukraine with a scarf. As can be seen from photos distributed in the media, the shawl depicts the country of Hungary in its old borders, which also include territories that today belong to Ukraine, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia and Serbia. Ukraine demanded an apology and a statement that Hungary had no claims to Ukrainian territory.
The recent Russian attacks on electricity plants and other infrastructure facilities in Ukraine have not yet resulted in significantly more people from the country seeking refuge in Germany. Since the high point in March, the number of war refugees from Ukraine identified by the Federal Police entering Germany or in the country has fallen, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said on request. In the past few weeks, “small increases in the number of arrivals have been recorded”. However, no trend can be derived from this development.
However, the spokesman pointed out that there is no reliable information on the exact number of people who entered the country as a result of the war. This has to do with the fact that the majority of them can enter without a visa. In addition, there are no stationary border controls, for example on the border with Poland.
According to an evaluation by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), a total of 1,026,599 people were recorded in the central register of foreigners on November 21 who had entered Germany since February 24, 2022 in connection with the Ukraine war. However, it can be assumed that the data of some Ukrainians who have already left Germany are also stored there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid at an emergency UN Security Council meeting as “crimes against humanity”. “When we have temperatures below zero and millions of people without electricity, without heating and without water, it is a blatant crime against humanity,” Zelenskyy said in his video address. The ongoing Russian attacks are hitting Ukraine hard.
The human rights organization Amnesty International has complained that the media and human rights activists reporting on anti-war protests in Russia are being massively obstructed. “We can see that the Russian authorities are not only doing everything they can to stop and severely punish any protest, no matter how peaceful. They also try to prevent such protests from even becoming public knowledge,” said Natalia Prilutskaya, Russia researcher at Amnesty International, according to a press release by the organization on Thursday.
Amnesty has seen the rights of the media and activists increasingly restricted since the Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin took office in 2000. But since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in February of this year, reprisals have “increased considerably”. In addition to increasing violence against journalists and independent observers during protests by the police, the NGO complained above all about legal restrictions.
For example, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a much-criticized law came into force in Russia, on the basis of which media and individuals are threatened with high penalties for spreading “discrediting of the Russian army”. Practically all news that does not reflect the official Kremlin portrayal with regard to the war in Ukraine, which in Moscow can officially only be described as a “military special operation”, can fall under this formulation.
French President Emmanuel Macron has described the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity and water supplies as war crimes, which must have consequences. “Today there were massive bombing raids on Ukraine, leaving large parts of the country without water and electricity,” Macron said on Wednesday evening. “Any strike against civilian infrastructure constitutes a war crime and must not go unpunished.”
“With winter approaching, we will gather Ukraine’s international supporters in Paris on December 13 to help the country resist and ensure its access to energy,” Macron said. “We also don’t forget Moldova, which is also affected by water and power cuts.”
Despite his condemnation of Russia, Macron announced on Wednesday that he wanted to contact Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin again in the next few days. “I intend to establish direct contact with him on civilian nuclear issues and the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in the next few days after we exchanged views on these issues with the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Macron said, as reported by BFMTV.
According to official information, technicians are making progress in restoring the power supply after the heavy Russian rocket attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. In 15 administrative areas there is partial electricity again, said the deputy head of the Presidential Office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, on Wednesday evening in Kyiv. In the capital itself, critical infrastructure such as hospitals will be supplied again, after which it will be the turn of private consumers. By the evening, 2,750 emergency contact points had been put into operation nationwide, with heating, light, water, internet and telephone for citizens.
The Russian army fired around 70 rockets at Ukraine on Wednesday and again caused serious damage to the infrastructure. According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, 80 percent of households in Kyiv were without electricity and water. According to the Interior Ministry, ten people were killed by the shelling.
After Russian attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a further condemnation of Moscow before the UN Security Council. Russia must be clearly described as a terrorist state, Zelenskyj demanded via video from the committee in New York on Wednesday. The council meeting had previously been put on the agenda at short notice after a request from Zelenskyj.
The attacks on critical infrastructure, which led to widespread power outages, are “crimes against humanity,” Zelensky said. He called for more air defense support and for United Nations teams of experts to investigate the damage.
