04/25/2022
Ukraine war in the live ticker
+++ 04:26 Russian oil depot near the border with Ukraine is on fire +++
A serious fire broke out in a Russian oil depot near the border with Ukraine on Monday night. The fire caught storage tanks in the city of Bryansk, the local civil protection agency told the TASS news agency. Firefighting work was in progress. It was initially not known whether the fire could be related to the war in Ukraine.
+++ 03:38 Russian military spending increased in year before Ukraine invasion +++
Russia invested more money in its military in the period leading up to its invasion of Ukraine than before. Russian military spending rose 2.9 percent year-on-year to $65.9 billion in 2021, according to a report by the Stockholm-based peace research institute Sipri. In 2021, Russia put 4.1 percent of its gross domestic product into the military, which is a significantly higher proportion than in Germany, for example. According to Sipri, the country of President Vladimir Putin benefited from income from the fossil fuel business.
+++ 02:40 EU plans sanctions on Russian oil +++
The European Union is preparing further sanctions against Russia. “We’re working on a sixth sanctions package and one of the issues we’re considering is some form of oil embargo. If we impose sanctions, we need to do it in a way that maximizes the pressure on Russia while minimizing collateral damage for us minimized itself,” European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told the Times newspaper.
+++ 01:45 SPD expects additional costs for housing for war refugees +++
Shortly before the cabinet deliberations on the supplementary budget, the SPD does not rule out additional costs for the accommodation of war refugees from Ukraine. “It is important that the accommodation of the refugees does not fail due to financing issues,” says the vice-chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Verena Hubertz, of the “Rheinische Post” newspaper. “We need new living space, and moving in is exacerbating the problem.” The KfW special program, which was launched at short notice and supports cities and municipalities in creating, modernizing and equipping facilities for refugees, is “an important first step”. Due to the high demand from the municipalities, however, the SPD politician did not rule out that the special program, which has already been increased to 500 million euros, will not be sufficient. Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner is to present the supplementary budget to the cabinet on Wednesday.
+++ 00:55 Wüst calls for the SPD leadership to exclude Schröder from the party +++
The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, is calling on the SPD leadership to initiate expulsion proceedings against former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder because of his statements in the New York Times about the Ukraine war. “The interview in the New York Times is pretty disturbing and there must be consequences. The entire SPD leadership has said: If Gerhard Schröder sticks to his well-paid mandates with Putin, he can no longer be a member of the SPD,” says Wüst at the broadcaster “Bild TV”. Now he says that’s exactly what he intends to do. “That’s why the SPD is now called upon to put their words into action.”
+++ 00:18 Klitschko calls for sanctions against former Chancellor Schröder +++
Following Gerhard Schröder’s recent statements in an interview about the war in Ukraine, Kiev’s mayor Vitali Klitschko is calling for western sanctions against the former chancellor. “All those who continue to work for the war criminal Putin must be severely sanctioned,” Klitschko told the Bild newspaper. Schröder is part of the Putin system and thus “shared responsibility for the slaughter of women and children in Ukraine. In view of his propaganda for the Kremlin, one wonders why Schröder lives in Hanover and not in Moscow.”
+++ 23:36 Austin and Blinken are talking to Zelenskyj “at this moment” +++
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Kyiv in the evening. The visitors from the United States were “talking with the president at that moment,” says Zelenskyi’s adviser Oleksiy Arestovich in an interview on the YouTube video platform. According to Zelensky, the talks with the US ministers should be about US arms supplies for the Ukrainian armed forces. It was the first official visit by US officials to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
+++ 22:46 OSCE advocates the release of employees in Ukraine +++
The top of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) calls for the immediate release of four local employees in eastern Ukraine. They were arrested in areas of the Luhansk and Donetsk districts that are not under the control of the government in Kyiv. “They have been held without charge for some time and the OSCE and their families are not sufficiently informed about their situation,” said Polish Foreign Minister and current OSCE Chair Zbigniew Rau. The Vienna-based OSCE decided at the end of February to send its international observers out of the country in view of the Russian invasion. The unarmed experts primarily monitored the ceasefire line between state troops and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. After the withdrawal, Ukrainian employees remained.
+++ 22:06 US Secretary of State Blinken arrives in Kyiv +++
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian sources. There he is holding talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says one of his advisers. Zelenskyj announced on Saturday that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also wanted to visit the Ukrainian capital.
+++ 21:35 SPD top candidate demands deletion of Geisel’s Ukraine contribution +++
The SPD’s top candidate for the North Rhine-Westphalia state elections on May 15, Thomas Kutschaty, said he called on Düsseldorf’s former mayor Thomas Geisel in a telephone call to withdraw his contribution to the Ukraine war “today”. “Thomas Geisel’s blog post cannot stop there. Butscha’s war crimes in particular do not allow any relativization,” Kuchaty told the “Rheinische Post”. SPD politician Geisel had under the heading “Enough, Mr. Melnyk!” criticized the bold demeanor of the Ukrainian ambassador in Germany and the moral pressure on Ukraine to supply arms. Among other things, he accused Ukraine of “genocidal rhetoric” that made the number of victims appear higher.
+++ 21:11 Artist paints the fence of the German Embassy property in Vienna blue and yellow +++
Activists paint the fence of the German embassy property in Vienna in the Ukrainian national colors. The site is directly opposite the Russian Embassy. “We tolerate that,” says a spokesman for the German representation of the German Press Agency. However, he makes it clear that the blue and yellow action on Saturday was not commissioned or carried out by his embassy. According to German envoy Rainer Rudolph, an artist is behind the remodeling of the fence around the construction site where the new German embassy building will be built. “The side that matters is painted so that the neighbors there have a good view of it,” writes Rudolph on Twitter.
+++ 20:42 Habeck criticizes the Union’s request for arms deliveries +++
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck calls it “not happy overall” that the Bundestag could vote on two motions on the issue of arms deliveries to Ukraine. On ZDF, he speaks of his hope “that Germany will come together again in the strength of the unity of the last few days and weeks and that the Bundestag will be able to vote together as one” and alludes to one of the opposition’s own proposals.
You can read about previous developments here.