05/17/2022
Ukraine war in the live ticker
+++ 06:06 governor: Sievjerodonetsk under heavy fire +++
At least ten people have been killed in attacks on the city of Sieverodonetsk, Luhansk region governor Serhiy Gaiday said on Telegram. The Russian troops would bomb Sieverodonetsk “incessantly”. Because of the ongoing shelling, access to the area and communication are currently made significantly more difficult. He asked residents not to leave the shelters. In an earlier statement, Gaiday warned of artillery attacks on Sieverodonetsk and the nearby city of Lysychansk. This caused fires in residential areas.
+++ 03:46 start of social assistance for Ukrainians could fail due to lack of special paper +++
The districts see problems in the implementation of the planned entitlement to Hartz IV benefits for refugees from Ukraine. The start of social assistance from June 1 could fail due to bureaucracy. The reason is a lack of special paper, says the president of the district council, Reinhard Sager, to the newspapers of the “Funke Mediengruppe”. “The Federal Printing Office is currently unable to deliver enough forgery-proof document templates on which the immigration authorities issue their fictional certificates.” The certificates serve as proof for an application for a residence permit. “It may sound anachronistic, but it’s set in 2022.” The job centers should be able to temporarily recognize other certificates from the immigration offices.
+++ 01:41 Ukraine reports rocket attack near Lviv +++
According to Ukrainian sources, the area around the city of Lviv in western Ukraine has again become the target of an air raid. The attack was aimed at a military facility in the Yavoriv district on the border with Poland, local military chief Maxim Kositsky wrote on his Telegram news channel. Mayor Andriy Sadoviy stressed that there was no confirmed information about rocket hits in the city and thanked the air defense. In mid-March, a Russian airstrike hit the military training area in Javoriv, killing 35 people according to Ukrainian sources. In Yavoriv, Ukrainian soldiers had trained with Western instructors in recent years.
+++ 23:42 Kyiv: 260 soldiers leave Azov steelworks +++
After weeks of blockade, around 260 Ukrainian soldiers have left the Azov steelworks in Mariupol, according to the authorities. They are to be taken to Russian-held territory and later returned in a prisoner exchange, like the Ukrainian General Staff announced on Facebook. Read more about it here.
+++ 23:10 eyewitness: Buses with soldiers from Mariupol arrived in Novoazovsk +++
According to an eyewitness, Ukrainian soldiers evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol have arrived in Novoazovsk. Some were wounded, he reports.
+++ 22:34 According to the US think tank, Russia must increasingly resort to private militias +++
The US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) sees indications that Russia is running out of recruitable reservists. For this reason, the Russian military leadership is forced, for example, to combine soldiers from private military companies with others. This suspicion is supported by Ukrainian information on recruitment efforts by the Russian army. According to this, the Ukrainian military intelligence service reported that the Russian armed forces were conducting a covert mobilization in order to be able to set up new units.
+++ 22:15 US Secretary of the Treasury draws lessons from the war against Nazis: tough sanctions against Russia +++
According to the “New York TimesUS Treasury Secretary Yellen has promised to continue to hold Russia accountable with tough sanctions for its attack on Ukraine, citing the US’s handling of Nazi Germany during World War II. While visiting a museum dedicated to the history of Polish Jews She drew parallels with the actions of then US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau: In 1940, when the United States was still officially neutral in the war, Morgenthau urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign an executive order freezing the assets of Denmark and Norway He wanted to prevent such appropriation by the Nazis so that the money could not finance the German invasion of other countries.
You can read earlier developments in the Ukraine conflict here.