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Russian soldiers in Mariupol (May 22)
Photo: RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS SERVICE/HANDOUT HANDOUT/EPA
What has happened in the past few hours
According to the Ukrainian military, the
Russian armed forces
are pushing ahead with
their
major offensive
in
Donbass .
»The occupiers
shelled
more than
40 towns
in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and destroyed or damaged 47 civilian facilities, including 38 houses and a school.
As a result of this shelling, five civilians died and 12 were wounded,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Facebook.
The Ukrainian army repelled ten enemy attacks, destroyed four tanks and four drones and killed 62 "enemy soldiers".
Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
said Russian troops "greatly outnumbered" them in some parts of the east.
The reports of the fighting cannot be independently verified.
That says Kyiv
Zelenskyj sharply
rejects
suggestions
that
the
government in Kiev should make
territorial concessions
to
Russia to end the war .
Former US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger had suggested at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week that Ukraine should cede
Crimea,
annexed in 2014, to Russia
.
"Those who advise Ukraine to give something to Russia, these 'great world political figures', never see the ordinary people, the ordinary Ukrainians, the millions living in the territory they want to trade for an
illusory peace
," he said Zelenskyj.
He has also called
on the world community to more clearly side with
his
country
attacked by Russia
.
In his video speech, he was also disappointed by the consultations in Davos.
"No matter what the Russian state does, there is someone who says: Let's take his interests into account," Zelenskyy said.
It was the same in Davos.
“And that's despite thousands of Russian missiles hitting Ukraine.
Despite tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed.
Despite Bucha and Mariupol«.
Overall, the government
in
Kiev
currently sees
its
troops
in a
"very difficult moment at the front"
.
In the Donbass in the east of the country in particular, bitter fighting was raging,
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba
said in Davos on Wednesday.
"The battle for Donbass is very similar to the fighting in World War II."
"Some villages and towns, they just don't exist anymore," Kuleba told journalists in Switzerland.
"They were reduced to rubble by Russian artillery fire and Russian rocket launcher systems."
The Russian troops in the Donbass are apparently currently concentrating primarily on the strategically important
industrial city of Severodonetsk
.
The situation is "very difficult" and there are "already fighting in the suburbs," Governor Serhiy Gajdaj reported on online networks on Wednesday.
"Russian troops are already close enough to fire mortar shells." According to the governor, "the coming week could be crucial."
Moscow says so
Pro
-Russian fighters
who support Moscow's soldiers said Severodonetsk was
"encircled"
on three sides .
The only bridge to leave the city is now under Russian control, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.
This information could not initially be verified.
According to Kuleba, Ukraine "urgently" needs
rocket launcher
systems
to be
able to withstand the Russian attackers.
Kuleba explained in Davos that Russia is superior to Ukraine when it comes to heavy weapons.
However, Kiev's troops would have the greatest disadvantage with multiple rocket launcher systems.
humanitarian situation
In the embattled
eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk
, local police buried at least
150 people in a mass
grave.
This was announced by the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, on his Telegram channel.
In an emergency, the police have to take on many tasks, including those of undertakers, he wrote.
Victims of the Russian shelling were buried in the grave, as well as people who died of natural causes.
Video showed the bodies being thrown into a pit in white bags, each labeled with their name.
After the war the dead should be properly buried, the governor promised.
Hajdaj said the eastern Ukrainian administrative region of Luhansk was
95 percent occupied by Russian troops
.
The situation is "extremely bad".
The cities of Sievjerodonzek and Lyssychansk, which used to have 100,000 inhabitants each, are still in Ukrainian hands, but have been under heavy fire for days.
Only about 40,000 civilians remain in the region, and hardly anyone wants to leave, Hajdaj said.
economic consequences
Deutsche
Bahn
(DB) wants to provide
Ukraine
with more
support for grain exports
.
"In view of the impending famine in parts of the world and the enormous need to export millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to the world, we as DB Cargo will organize further orders and train journeys in coordination with the federal government," says DB Cargo boss Sigrid Nikutta the editorial network Germany.
DB Cargo, with its subsidiaries in Poland and Romania, currently runs several trains a day with grain to various seaports.
»Now the task is to expand these agricultural exports.
The goal is
sustainable connections
to the
seaports
of the
North Sea
and the Black and Mediterranean Seas.«
Because of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports, Ukraine urgently needs alternative export routes to export grain abroad.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, around 25 million tons of grain are currently stuck in Ukraine.
The country is therefore urgently looking for alternative routes.
Because of the different gauges, however, freight trains have to be reloaded at the border.
jok/Reuters/dpa
