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Photo: STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAINE (DSNS) / via REUTERS
What has happened in the past few hours
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has blamed Russia for a
rocket attack on a cultural center in the east of the country that
injured
at least seven
.
An eleven-year-old child was also injured in
the shelling in the city of
Lozova in the Kharkiv region , the head of state wrote on Telegram.
"The occupiers have identified culture, education and humanity as their enemies," Zelenskyj said.
Such attacks are "absolute stupidity" and "wickedness."
Zelenskyj published a video on his account that showed a rocket impact.
Then a huge cloud of smoke could be seen.
After weeks of fighting, the
Azov steelworks
in the Ukrainian port of
Mariupol is under
Russian control
, according to information from Moscow
.
All fighters surrendered, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday evening.
Since May 16, a total of
2,439 Ukrainian soldiers
have been taken prisoner by the Russians.
Earlier, after weeks of bitter fighting, Ukrainian forces had given up defending the city.
(Read more here).
That says Kyiv
Zelenskyj
has brought up a
fund
for
compensation payments
to countries suffering from Russian attacks, for example
.
A mechanism must be developed together with other partner countries "so that everyone who has suffered from Russia's actions can receive compensation for all losses," said the head of state in a video speech.
That could be regulated in a “multilateral agreement”.
Zelenskyy suggested freezing or confiscating Russian capital and property abroad and transferring it to this new fund.
"That would be fair." Russia would feel the "true weight of every missile, every bomb, every projectile it fired at us."
According to estimates,
war damage
in Ukraine is already in the hundreds of billions of euros.
Moscow says so
Russia has
classified Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky
and
former world chess champion Garry Kasparov
as "
foreign agents
. "
The Tass state agency reported that they had been put on the relevant list by the Ministry of Justice in Moscow.
Both were involved in political activities and were funded by Ukraine and the United States, the ministry said.
Many NGOs and the media are classified as "foreign agents" in Russia, which they criticize as stigmatization.
Kasparov had recently personally criticized the Russian head of state Vladimir Putin for the war against Ukraine.
The Russian authorities had repeatedly cracked down on the organizations of former ex-oligarch Khodorkovsky, who lived abroad.
International reactions
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
has
scheduled a new international
contact group for Ukraine for next Monday.
US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby announced the talks would this time be held via video.
More than 40 countries are involved.
At the end of April, Austin invited international partners to a meeting at the US air force base in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, to discuss aid for Ukraine.
There he promised that the contact group would hold monthly meetings in the future.
Kirby said several countries that were not present last time have expressed an interest in participating.
According to a media report, Great Britain
wants to deliver
modern weapons to the Republic of Moldova
in order to deter Russia from a possible attack.
This is what the newspaper The Telegraph writes, citing British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
The defense weapons that Moldova should receive would have to meet the NATO standard.
British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson
has spoken to
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
about
Sweden and Finland's plans to join NATO
.
Erdoğan has so far vetoed it.
Johnson told him in a phone call that the two countries would be a valuable addition to the alliance.
A spokesman for Johnson also said the prime minister had asked Erdoğan to work with representatives of Sweden, Finland and NATO to assuage concerns ahead of a leaders' summit in Madrid next month.
The
military historian Sönke Neitzel has criticized Chancellor
Olaf Scholz's (SPD)
warnings
against an escalation of the Russian war in Ukraine as
"unwise in terms of foreign policy, even risky"
.
"Scholz shows Putin his fear," said the Potsdam professor of military history of the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung" (NOZ).
“That promotes the image of a weak West.
This is exactly what made Putin dare to go to war in the first place.”
Ukraine's survival depends on the United States.
"If Ukraine had relied on Germany and the EU, it would be Russian now," Neitzel said.
In his estimation, the war will last "many more years."
Economic Reactions
The
US rating agency Moody's
has
again downgraded
Ukraine
's
credit rating.
Moody 's issued a negative outlook on Friday (local time) for the drop by one notch to
Caa3
– so further downgrades could follow.
At the beginning of March, Moody's had already downgraded Ukraine's credit rating by two notches from B3 to Caa2.
The rating agency gave "a longer-lasting military conflict than Moody's had initially expected" as the reason for the renewed downgrade.
This increases the risk of Ukraine's debt restructuring and losses for private sector creditors.
Despite extensive financial support from the international community, there is a risk that the significant increase in Ukrainian national debt will prove "unsustainable in the medium term".
what is happening today
A hybrid congress of the
Peace and Future
Workshop Association is taking place in Berlin on the topic »Living without NATO – ideas for peace«.
In addition to pacifist activists
, several left-wing members of
the Bundestag
are among the participants .
According to information from the newspaper "Junge Welt", the former left leader
Oskar Lafontaine
should also speak at the event.
The topic is the Ukraine war.
In the call for the event, the Russian attack is described as violating international law and "unjustified," but criticism of NATO is also leveled.
bbr/dpa/Reuters/AFP