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EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola with Ukrainian President Zelenskyi
Photo: AP
For Wladimir Klitschko it must have been one of his tougher fights: The former boxing world champion met Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin.
The SPD politician received the Ukrainian in the Chancellery, as government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said.
On Friday, Klitschko also met Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), on Thursday he had already spoken to Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens).
Klitschko urged for help for his country.
He told the television station “Welt”: “The talks have been held, now action must be taken.”
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, has already done some deeds - simply because she traveled to Kyiv, like the heads of government from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, to signal support for Ukraine.
In the capital, a few kilometers from the front line, she pledged support and solidarity to the Ukrainian government.
It was probably not without danger: the mayor of Kiev and brother of Wladimir Klitschko, Vitali Klitschko, warned: "The risk of dying in Kyiv is quite high." According to him, there was fierce fighting north and east of the city.
At a meeting with the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, in Kyiv, Metsola promised: "We will help rebuild your cities." Financial and military aid will be maintained and expanded.
She tweeted: "I'm in Kyiv to deliver a message of hope.
We are with you.« According to her spokesman, Metsola is in Kyiv on behalf of the EU Parliament.
Metsola emphasized that Ukraine can count on the full support of the European Parliament on its way to the EU.
An overview of the further developments of the day:
The humanitarian situation
For all the hope that these visits radiate, the humanitarian situation in Ukraine remains tense.
At noon, the Red Cross was still confident that the Mariupol escape corridors could be opened later in the day.
But the convoy to the besieged city had to turn around.
The situation makes it impossible to continue with the relief effort, it said in a statement.
Help is urgently needed there: water, food and heated rooms are hardly available.
With international help, thousands of people should have been brought to safety via a humanitarian corridor.
After all: The second flight from Moldova with Ukrainian refugees has arrived in Germany.
The machine with 117 refugees on board landed at Erfurt-Weimar Airport, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
As a small neighboring country to Ukraine, Moldova is particularly affected by the Russian war of aggression.
A week ago, 134 Ukrainian refugees were flown from Moldova to Germany.
Next Tuesday, a Moldova conference is to discuss further specific aid for the former Soviet republic.
Poland is currently facing even greater challenges: more than 2.4 million people from Ukraine have fled to safety in the neighboring country since the Russian invasion began more than a month ago.
The military situation
In military terms, the war is said to have reached Russian territory for the first time.
Moscow accused Ukraine of attacking fuel depots in Belgorod near the border.
However, Ukraine rejects the allegations: the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council in Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said on TV according to the Reuters news agency: "For some reason they claim it was us." According to the information he has, doesn't correspond to the truth.
In other respects, too, it is still difficult to keep track of actual military developments.
The British Ministry of Defense, citing intelligence sources, said Ukrainian forces had recaptured two villages on a key supply route between Chernihiv near the Belarusian border and the capital Kyiv.
According to their own statements, Ukrainian troops have also recaptured eleven settlements in the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson in the past few days.
During the advance in the north of the region, they also came across heavy Russian military technology, including T-64 tanks.
However, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also acknowledged problems on other fronts.
"The situation in the south and Donbass remains extremely difficult," he said.
According to the Ukrainian general staff, Russia wants to maintain its military presence in the south and east.
There are attempts to set up an administration in the occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
Therefore, further fights are expected there.
That's what the Kremlin says
In the person of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russia is still looking for support from major powers that have not taken a clear position on the invasion of Ukraine - probably also in order to circumvent Western sanctions because of the war.
After China on Thursday, he now visited India.
According to media reports, Moscow wants to establish a rupee-ruble payment mechanism with the help of India.
Russia will also increasingly use alternative currencies such as the Indian rupee for international trade, said Lavrov, according to the Reuters news agency, who spoke to his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
Moscow said it was open to talks with India about buying Russian products.
Lavrov: "We are ready to deliver anything that India wants to buy." There is no doubt that a way can be found "to circumvent the artificial hurdles."
At the same time, India announced that it would continue to buy oil from Russia.
Despite pressure from the United States and Europe, the country with its more than 1.3 billion people has not yet expressed any criticism of the Russian war of aggression - and maintains close relations with Russia, including in the area of armaments.
On the other hand, Moscow is trying to be tough on countries that reject the Russian attack.
Gas importers from Western countries are now supposed to open accounts with Gazprombank in order to continue to be supplied.
President Vladimir Putin has threatened to stop deliveries if he does not.
However, according to a decree signed by Putin, payments can still be deposited into the Russian account in euros or dollars.
The bank converts the money into rubles and transfers it to the parent company.
Germany and other countries had strictly refused to pay in other currencies.
Meanwhile, Russia should continue pumping gas west on Friday on a large scale, a spokesman for Gazprom said, according to the Interfax agency.
That says Kyiv
While the negotiations with Russia are ongoing, the government in Kyiv is also trying to increase the pressure on Russia economically.
The economic advisor to the Ukrainian President, Alexander Rodnyansky, called on German companies to end their activities in Russia.
At the same time, Ukraine wants to increase taxes for foreign companies that continue to do business in Russia by 50 percent.
The parliament voted in the first reading for a corresponding bill.
After a second reading, it must be signed by President Zelenskyj.
The country also made massive allegations against the attackers – and accused the Russian troops of war crimes.
Allegations now supported by a new report by Amnesty International.
However, at least some captured soldiers can now apparently return to their compatriots: According to Ukrainian information, there has been another exchange of prisoners.
The Russian side released 71 Ukrainian soldiers and 15 female soldiers from POWs and received the same number of their own people in return, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereschuk wrote on Facebook.
The information could not be verified.
This is how the West reacts
The delivery of tanks to the Ukraine was still taboo in Germany until recently - after all, they are not just so-called defensive weapons.
Nevertheless, Berlin has cleared the way for the resale of 58 combat vehicles from GDR stocks.
The federal government agreed to the delivery of armored personnel carriers from the Czech Republic to Ukraine.
The PbV-501 armored personnel carriers are equipped with cannons and machine guns and were part of the standard equipment of the Warsaw Pact armies.
Australia has also pledged further military support to the war-torn country: Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would grant Zelenskyy's request for Bushmaster armored vehicles, which the Australian army uses.
In view of the war in Ukraine, the calls for rapid rearmament are also getting louder in Germany: According to SPIEGEL information, the troops are insisting on quickly replenishing their own Panzerfaust depots.
After thousands of shots were delivered to Ukraine, their own security interests were "significantly endangered".
At the political level, Germany is also pushing for the arming of drones.
After years of debate, 140 missiles for arming the Heron drones are to be ordered from Israel quickly, according to a procurement proposal from the Federal Ministry of Finance for the budget committee, which SPIEGEL has seen.
The budget committee is expected to approve the proposal next Wednesday.
Politically, the EU is trying to limit the damage after Lavrov's trip to China.
At one point, they warned the country against backing Russia's war.
"No European citizen would understand if there was any support for Russia's ability to wage war," said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after a video conference with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and State and Party leader Xi Jinping.
According to Chinese sources, Li Keqiang said China was promoting peace talks “in its own way”.
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Apr/dpa/Reuters
