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Destruction in Mariupol
Photo: IMAGO/Vladimir Gerdo / IMAGO/ITAR-TASS
What has happened in the past few hours
Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
has accused Russia of wanting to destroy "every city" in the
Donbass
.
'Every single one, no exaggeration.
Like Volnovakha, like Mariupol,” he said in his video address.
However, the Ukrainian military is doing everything "to stop the occupiers' attacks."
Fierce fighting continued on Friday, especially in eastern Donbass.
The city of Sievjerodonetsk
in the Luhansk region
is particularly affected .
According to Governor Serhiy Hajdaj, the Russians destroyed a sports hall, among other things.
In the southern region of
Cherson
, the Ukrainian army says it has meanwhile attacked
Russian military positions
.
The Air Force has flown attacks on equipment and personnel locations and field depots near five towns in the region, the General Staff said.
A number of countries have
initially prevented
Russia
's election to the
United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) , which was believed to be safe.
In five ballots on Friday in New York, Russia missed the necessary two-thirds majority – unlike 17 other countries.
At the same time, North Macedonia surprisingly took part in battle votes against Russia in the decision for the last free place.
According to diplomats, there is a concerted approach, primarily by Western countries, led by the United States.
It
was said to express
disapproval of Moscow's war of aggression in Ukraine.
The Ecosoc Council consists of 54 states, each of which is elected for three years - in contrast, for example, to the UN Security Council, on which Russia has a permanent seat.
Every year 18 of the members are exchanged.
That's what Ukraine says
About
10,000 soldiers
of the Ukrainian army have been killed since the Russian invasion in February, according to one of Zelenskyy's advisers.
The figure came on Friday in one of President Confidence Oleksiy Arestovych's YouTube video interviews with Russian opposition leader Mark Feygin.
Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said this week that up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are currently being killed every day.
Arestovych also said that
around 100 military personnel were dying a day
on the Ukrainian side, even at the beginning of the war .
In response to Feygin's question as to whether a total of around 10,000 soldiers were killed, he answered: "Yes, roughly".
Neither Ukraine nor Russia have so far provided exhaustive information on the losses.
According to Arestovych, more Russian than Ukrainian soldiers are constantly being killed.
On Friday, the Ukrainian artillery attacks with Western ammunition were particularly efficient, he said, citing the estimate of around 600 Russian soldiers killed.
In view of this, the Zelenskyj adviser appealed to the
West
to deliver
arms and ammunition
much more quickly .
The Ukrainian government is very grateful for the help so far, without which it would probably have been pushed back behind the Dnieper River.
But he doesn't understand the
slowness of the deliveries
.
In order to repel Russian aggression, Ukraine needs, among other things, more artillery firepower quickly.
That's what Russia says
Russia continues its attempts to tie occupied Ukrainian territories closer to itself.
From Saturday,
Russian passports
are to be handed out in the parts of the
Zaporizhia
region controlled by Russian troops .
The recipients would then be considered full citizens of Russia, a member of the occupation authorities Vladimir Rogov told Rossiya-24 TV channel on Friday.
According to Rogow, more than 70,000 people have applied in the area.
President Vladimir Putin simplified the procedure for obtaining Russian passports in May.
Russia also distributes them in other occupied territories and introduces the ruble there as a means of payment.
Ukrainian authorities accuse the occupiers of forcing people into Russian citizenship and fear an annexation of the occupied territories.
International reactions
Estonia
has summoned the Russian ambassador to protest Kremlin chief Putin's statements on the history of the Baltic country.
In a speech, the Russian president alluded to the
capture of the city of Narva
in the 18th century.
The Estonian Foreign Ministry in Tallinn spoke on Friday of "completely unacceptable" statements.
On Thursday, Putin compared the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine with the Great Northern War under Tsar Peter I and spoke of a repatriation of Russian soil.
Peter I did not conquer the area around today's metropolis of St. Petersburg from the Swedes, but rather won it back.
The same applies in a similar way to Narva, which is right on the border with Russia.
With almost 60,000 inhabitants, Narva is the third largest city in EU and NATO member Estonia.
Many residents have Russian roots.
In the governing coalition, the
FDP
is pushing for a quick
delivery of German armored personnel carriers
to Ukraine.
The FDP says "that we should give the Ukrainians more support for the Marder infantry fighting vehicle," said deputy parliamentary group leader
Alexander
Graf Lambsdorff
the Augsburger Allgemeine.
The martens are not battle tanks.
"They are ready in the yard, they could be processed and delivered." And: "As the FDP, we believe that this should happen."
Lambsdorff was more reticent about the delivery of Leopard-type battle tanks, which was also requested by the Ukraine. »There are neither French, British, Italian or American battle tanks in the Ukraine.
In this respect there is also no German Leopard tank.«
Green leader Omid Nouripour
has spoken out in favor of classifying the famine deliberately brought about by Stalin in 1932 and 1933 - the so-called
Holodomor
- as a
genocide against
the Ukrainian people.
"The recognition of this horrific crime would be an important signal of empathy and historical awareness towards the people of Ukraine," Nouripour told the newspapers of the Funke media group.
The Ukrainian word holodomor means "murder by starvation".
The Holodomor refers to a great famine that was deliberately caused by the political leadership of the then Soviet Union under the dictator Joseph Stalin and that killed up to four million Ukrainians.
At that time there were also deaths in southern Russia and Kazakhstan.
At the beginning of April, against the background of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the Czech parliament classified and condemned the Holodomor as a genocide against the Ukrainian people.
Economic Reactions
Many large German companies have so far hardly hired refugees from Ukraine.
This is the result of a survey by "Welt am Sonntag" among companies listed in the
Dax-40
according to the preliminary report.
The reasons given were the low number of applicants and a lack of language skills.
Only a few Ukrainians have applied to the reinsurer
Munich Re
in recent weeks.
According to the survey, the situation was similar for the car manufacturer
BMW
and the medical group
Fresenius
.
The insurer Allianz, which has advertised 184 positions under the hashtag “standwithukraine”, currently has fifteen candidates in the recruitment process.
BASF boss Martin Brudermüller
warns of the drastic consequences of a possible
gas embargo
for the chemical company.
"If we weren't allotted any more gas, we had a few hours to shut down the Ludwigshafen site," said the manager of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".
According to the preliminary report, Brudermüller also does not believe that a gas embargo is the right way to end the war in Ukraine.
He believes that high-tech sanctions are much more effective "when there are no spare parts for aircraft, no semiconductors and no software updates".
In the interview, Brudermüller admitted that the situation
should have been reassessed when Russia annexed
Crimea in 2014.
Because of the long and reliable partnership, BASF decided at the time to co-finance the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which has since been stopped: »Would we do it again?
No."
Russia has left the
World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO).
A government order to this effect was published in Moscow on Friday.
Russia's membership of the United Nations agency was suspended by the United Nations General Assembly at the end of April because of the war of aggression in Ukraine.
Shortly before, Moscow had already announced its withdrawal from the UNWTO.
This was justified with a "politicization" of the organization.
humanitarian situation
The mayor of the Russian-controlled city of
Mariupol
in southern Ukraine has called on the United Nations and the International Red Cross to work to establish a
humanitarian corridor
so that the remaining residents could leave the city.
Cholera broke out in the city.
"There is an outbreak of
dysentery
and
cholera
... The war, which has claimed the lives of more than 20,000 people, will unfortunately claim the lives of thousands more people in Mariupol with these outbreaks of infection," he said on Ukrainian television.
The sanitary facilities had been destroyed.
Bodies decomposed in the streets.
what is happening today
Chancellor
Olaf Scholz (SPD) concludes his
trip to the Balkans
with visits to North Macedonia and Bulgaria
on Saturday .
The background to the visit is Russia's attempts to expand its traditionally strong influence in the region of former Yugoslavia
bbr/dpa/AFP/Reuters
