07/02/2022
Ukraine war in the live ticker
+++ 02:10 USA: Snake Island deduction sign of Ukraine’s strength +++
The US government sees the recapture of Snake Island as a success for the Ukrainian military. Russia’s claim that the withdrawal was a goodwill gesture lacks credibility, a senior US Defense Department official said. “The Ukrainians have made it very difficult for the Russians to maintain their operations there,” he said, according to the Pentagon. That is the reason why the Russians left the island.
+++ 01:12 Federal Network Agency fears total failure of Russian gas supplies +++
The President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, fears a total failure of Russian gas supplies – and appeals to the population to save energy. The question is whether the upcoming regular maintenance of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline “will become a longer-lasting political maintenance,” said Müller to the newspapers of the Funke media group. If the gas flow from Russia “is motivated to be lowered for a longer period of time, we have to talk more seriously about savings”. The twelve weeks before the start of the heating season must be used to make preparations, he said.
Read more about this here.
+++ 00:19 Selenskyj: Rocket attack on residential building targeted terror +++
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the rocket attack on a residential building in the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa as “deliberate, targeted Russian terror”. “It was a simple house with about 160 people. Ordinary people lived in it, civilians,” he said in a video message. So far, 21 dead and around 40 injured have been counted. “Unfortunately, the death toll is increasing.” Neither weapons nor military equipment were hidden in the building – “as Russian propagandists and officials always tell about such attacks”. The impact of the three rockets was neither a mistake nor an oversight.
+++ 23:14 Ukraine: Connection to Zaporizhia nuclear plant is up again +++
The state operator of Ukrainian nuclear power plants, Energoatom, announced that the connection to the monitoring systems of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, has been restored. The power plant is located in an area that Russian troops have conquered. According to Energoatom, the data flow was restored “by its own efforts”. Remote monitoring of the reactors was interrupted after Russian troops shut down cell phone networks that were transmitting the data.
+++ 22:20 Selenskyj: Odessa shelling was intentional +++
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Russian rocket hit a residential building in the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa as not accidental. “This is a targeted rocket attack by Russia, Russia’s terror against our towns and villages, against our people, adults and children,” said Zelenskyj, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, after a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in Kyiv. The missile used was actually designed to combat aircraft carriers and other warships. Three Russian rockets near the port city of Odessa killed at least 21 people.
+++ 21:45 Pentagon announces 820 million weapons package +++
The US government has pledged millions in additional military aid to Ukraine for defense in the Russian war of aggression. A US$820 million package aims to provide the country with additional munitions for the Himars missile launcher system, two surface-to-air missile defense systems called Nasams, artillery munitions and anti-artillery radars, such as the Pentagon announces in the evening. A large part does not come from US stocks, but from an agreement with the industry. Since the beginning of the war, the United States has pledged or delivered arms worth almost $7 billion to Ukraine. US President Joe Biden had already promised the new aid at the NATO summit in Madrid.
Read more about this here.
+++ 21:15 “Playing down the Holocaust”: Israel outraged by Melnyk +++
Israel has also criticized statements made by the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, about the controversial Ukrainian politician and partisan leader Stepan Bandera in World War II. These are “a distortion of historical facts, a trivialization of the Holocaust and an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people,” writes the Israeli embassy in Germany on Twitter. They also undermine “the courageous struggle of the Ukrainian people to live according to democratic values and in peace”.
+++ 20:45 Ukraine: Russia attacks Snake Island with phosphorus bombs +++
Ukraine has accused the Russian army of attacking Snake Island in the Black Sea with phosphorus bombs. In the evening, Moscow’s troops “twice carried out an air raid with phosphorus bombs,” writes the Ukrainian army chief Valeriy Zalushny on Telegram. Only on Thursday did the Russian army announce its withdrawal from the Ukrainian island, which it had previously occupied for four months.
You can read earlier developments of the Ukraine war here.