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Destroyed building in Kramatorsk
Photo:
YEVGEN HONCHARENKO / EPA
What has happened in the past few hours
According to police, three people were killed and around 20 others injured in a Russian missile attack in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.
A residential building was hit, the police said on Wednesday evening.
At the same time, she expressed the fear that there were other victims under the rubble of the house.
"Peaceful people were killed and buried under rubble," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
»This is the daily reality in our country.«
Kramatorsk is located in the Donetsk region.
This has been fiercely contested for months, and taking it completely is one of Russia's key war goals in Ukraine.
The Donetsk and Luhansk regions together form the Donbass region, which has been partially occupied by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
The Donbass is of great economic importance because of its raw materials and industry.
In the course of the Russian war of aggression, rockets repeatedly hit residential buildings, even though the Defense Ministry in Moscow claims to be attacking military targets.
That says Kyiv
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy warned of an increase in attacks ahead of the anniversary of Russia's start of the war on February 24.
In eastern Ukraine, the Russians aim to show achievements by that date, Zelensky said in a video message distributed in Kyiv late Wednesday evening.
"The situation is getting tougher," he said, praising the resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Zelenskyj condemned the attack in Kramatorsk.
“The only way to stop Russian terrorism is to defeat it.
through tanks.
fighter jets.
Long-range missiles,” he wrote on Twitter.
Before an EU-Ukraine summit this Friday, Zelenskyy informed in his video message about "successes" in the work of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.
For example, a police department that is said to have covered a prostitute ring was caught.
There was violence against girls, said Selenskyj.
There are first arrests.
According to the authorities, the officials are said to have collected one million euros in "protection money" every month.
Selenskyj had recently announced that he would take action against corruption, abuse of office and other criminal behavior in the civil service.
He said senior officials in the Customs Service had been fired.
In addition, the SBU secret service, investigators and prosecutors have carried out dozens of raids in different regions of the country to collect evidence for criminal proceedings.
"Justice will be established."
The EU Commission is also calling for further efforts in the fight against criminal abuse of power.
Before the presidential elections next year, Zelenskyy is likely to want to limit the damage for himself, because after almost four years in power, many voters still believe that too little has happened in this field.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal has called Germany's yes to the delivery of Leopard tanks "a historic, important, epochal decision."
However, time is of the essence.
"We hope that we will receive these tanks within weeks and not within months," Schmyhal told SPIEGEL.
He also urged haste on the question of his country joining the EU.
"Our ambition is to be formally ready for membership by the end of 2024," he said.
The government and president have made "maximum effort" to implement all the recommendations of the EU Commission at the EU-Ukraine summit this week in Kyiv.
The recommendations were announced when candidate status was granted in the summer and concern, for example, the reform of the judiciary and appointments to anti-corruption authorities.
"We would like the final review of this progress to be available by autumn so that we can open the actual accession negotiations this year," said Schmyhal.
Moscow says so
The founder of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, wants Russian politicians to be banned from traveling abroad.
According to Prigozhin, it is intolerable that government employees and MPs vacation in countries that are hostile to Russia.
In a letter published by the Wagner Group, the businessman addressed his proposal to the chairman of the Duma's Security and Anti-Corruption Committee, Vasily Piskarev.
Members of the Russian lower house would deal with the request, Piskarev told journalists, according to the Tass news agency.
"This initiative (...) certainly deserves attention," said the parliamentarian.
Debate on arms deliveries
The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell does not rule out that, despite the currently reluctant position of countries like Germany and the USA, combat aircraft will be delivered to Ukraine.
The delivery of tanks was also initially highly controversial, said the Spaniard.
In the end, however, an agreement was reached on the subject and the “red line” was crossed.
So far, there have been warnings of escalation risks for all arms deliveries, he said.
Borrell did not want to answer the question of whether he himself advocated fighter jet deliveries.
"My job is to reach a consensus," said the field official.
It is not helpful to publicly represent positions that could jeopardize this possibility.
Poland, among others, was recently open to the delivery of fighter jets to Ukraine.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden have so far not wanted to hand over such weapon systems.
International reactions
The US data analysis company Palantir admits for the first time a comprehensive involvement in the war effort in Ukraine.
According to company boss Alex Karp, the US company is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine”.
When asked about the use of artificial intelligence (AI), Karp explains that ethical aspects must be taken into account for software that can act independently.
"There are enormous ethical problems on the battlefield," says the CEO.
"If you use an algorithm to make a military decision and it goes wrong, who is responsible?" Palantier's software can use satellite imagery and social media to visualize an army's positions, allowing it to quickly determine the resources to deploy.
According to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the German government's Ukraine policy is causing increasing mistrust of Germany in Europe.
»I would say that a year ago there was a lot of trust in Germany from many other countries.
And now this pendulum has swung in the direction of distrust,” Morawiecki told the “Bild” newspaper.
This applies "particularly within the family of Central and Eastern European countries and also among the members of the European Union."
According to Morawiecki, Berlin could do a lot more for Kyiv.
"Germany has the potential to provide much more support than it has done so far, it has decision-making power within the European Union, it has money for Ukraine, it has diplomatic power."
Morawiecki also expressly criticized Chancellor Scholz.
Despite support for Ukraine, Scholz "seems to still believe that we should go back to business as usual with Russia."
But he doesn't believe "that this will ever be possible with this quasi-totalitarian regime," said the Polish head of government.
The US government is targeting Russia's defense sector with new sanctions over Moscow's war of aggression against Ukraine.
The US Treasury Department said on Wednesday that 22 people and institutions from several countries who were connected to a network to circumvent sanctions were affected.
This network supports the "military-industrial complex" of Russia.
The measures are aimed, among other things, at the arms dealer Igor Zimenkov.
The fact that Russia is trying to circumvent the sanctions shows that the measures taken so far have had an effect, it said.
It has become more expensive and more difficult to resupply the Kremlin chief Putin's war machine.
As a result of the sanctions, any assets of those affected are usually frozen in the USA.
US citizens are prohibited from doing business with them.
International business is also usually made much more difficult for those affected by the sanctions.
Just last week, the US declared the Russian private army Wagner a transnational criminal organization and imposed sanctions on the mercenary group and its network.
what is happening today
The battle for the city of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/43 is one of the most gruesome battles of the Second World War.
On the 80th anniversary of the slaughter between Russians and Germans, Kremlin chief Putin is planning a large commemoration today at the site of the events in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad).
jok/dpa/Reuters