The night of the war at a glance
US ministers travel to Kyiv – Russia is to deport Ukrainian civilians
4/24/2022 7:02 am
After numerous European heads of government, US representatives are now traveling to Kyiv for the first time. Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin are expected. President Zelenskyj hopes that they will put pressure on Germany to supply arms. Meanwhile, President Putin celebrates Easter.
After trips by numerous top European politicians, a high-ranking US visit is expected in Kyiv on Sunday. “I don’t think it’s a big secret. Tomorrow I will have a meeting with US Secretary of Defense (Lloyd Austin) and Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday. Zelenskyi announced that he would talk to Austin and Blinken about the “list of necessary weapons and the speed of their delivery”. The US ministries initially did not comment on the trips. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues unabated. The 59th night of the war at a glance.
Selenskyj hopes that the USA will put pressure on Germany
Zelenskyj said he hoped the US would also support arms deliveries from Germany. “So that they (Germany) start delivering what they have and what they are not currently using.” In the traffic light coalition, there is pressure from the Greens and FDP on SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz to expand arms deliveries. In a resolution of its federal party congress, the FDP also called for the delivery of heavy weapons from Germany to Ukraine. The country must be supported quickly and effectively in repelling the Russian war of aggression, it said.
Russians are said to have deported civilians
In his daily video speech, Zelensky sharply criticized the filtration camps set up by the Russian military in occupied territories. According to the official statement, possible fighters are to be separated from civilians in them. “The honest name for it is different – these are concentration camps. Just as the Nazis built them at the time,” said Zelenskyj. He criticized the fact that Ukrainians from these camps were also being taken to Russia. “Among other things, they deport children in the hope that they will forget where they come from, where their home is.” According to Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denizova, 308 Ukrainians were taken from the badly damaged Mariupol to a city 8,000 kilometers away in Russia’s Far East.
The Russian army is said to be forcibly recruiting Ukrainians
Ukraine also accuses Russian troops of forced conscription of residents in occupied territories. In addition to young people, doctors in the Cherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions are also particularly affected, the Ukrainian military intelligence wrote on Facebook. For example, medical personnel from the city of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region were forced, under threat of execution, to treat Russian soldiers at the front. In the Zaporizhia region, the Russian military and secret service agents were looking for people of draft age, the military intelligence continued. It is said that they should reinforce Russian units. The information could not be independently verified.
OSCE concerned about staff detained in eastern Ukraine
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is concerned about employees who have been captured in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine. The organization announced that these were Ukrainians who were working in the region together with international observers from the OSCE. At the end of February, the OSCE decided to temporarily end its mission in the face of the Russian invasion and to evacuate its unarmed international team. The main task of the observers was to monitor the ceasefire line between state troops and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Putin at Easter service in Moscow
Russian President Vladimir Putin attended an Easter service in Moscow on Sunday night. According to tradition, he presented the Russian Orthodox Church leader, Patriarch Kirill, with a decorated Easter egg, the Tass news agency reported. Kirill has always backed Putin’s policies. He blamed the West for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. In Ukraine, there is a curfew during the Orthodox Easter Vigil. At the celebration, President Zelenskyi gave his compatriots hope of victory. It was only a matter of time before everyone in Ukraine would be safe and peaceful again, he said in a video address.
Merz: German foreign and security policy in front of a shambles
With regard to the war in Ukraine, the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz sees years of serious failures in German politics. “The entire German foreign and security policy of the last 20 years is in ruins. When this war is over, we have to carefully analyze how it could have happened,” Merz told the “Bild am Sonntag”. From the CDU leader’s point of view, by 2014 at the latest, after the occupation of Crimea, “Russia would have needed massive sanctions and isolation.”
This will be important on Sunday:
- US Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin visit Kyiv
- In Germany, German arms deliveries and the foreign policy course towards Russia are still being debated
You can read all the other developments of the day in our live ticker on the Ukraine war.