Liveblog: ++ Melnyk believes in China’s role as mediator ++

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Melnyk considers China’s role as a mediator in the Ukraine war to be conceivable. According to a Ukrainian military spokesman, Ukraine continues to control a key supply route to the city of Bakhmut. The developments in the live blog.

The Association of Towns and Municipalities calls for a “restart” in refugee policy for the upcoming migration summit of the federal and state governments. “Many municipalities have long since reached their capacity limits in terms of accommodation, integration, and the creation of daycare and school places,” said general manager Gerd Landsberg to the newspapers of the Funke media group. The number of refugees must be reduced through fundamental changes.

In the past few weeks, representatives of the federal government have repeatedly rejected calls for more federal funds for refugee care. After the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, around 1.1 million people came to Germany from the country last year, almost a million of whom stayed.

According to British intelligence services, Russian commanders in the war against Ukraine have significantly tightened the penalties for violations of troop discipline. The Ministry of Defense in London said, citing “numerous” reports from Russian fighters, that soldiers would be put in improvised cells just for trying to end the service contract or for minor offenses such as drunkenness. These are holes in the ground covered with a metal grid.

“In the early months of the war, many Russian commanders took a relatively lax approach to enforcing discipline, allowing those who refused to serve to return home quietly,” the statement said. “Since the fall of 2022, there have been several increasingly draconian initiatives to improve discipline in the force, especially since Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov took command in January 2023.”

The Ministry of Defense in London has been publishing daily information on the course of the war since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, citing intelligence information. Moscow accuses London of a disinformation campaign.

The Russian Olympic Committee has protested the International Olympic Committee’s recommendation that athletes from Russia and Belarus should only be admitted to international competitions without a flag, anthem or other national identification. This is exaggerated and discriminatory.

“In our opinion, a dangerous precedent has been set when no athlete in the world can be sure that their human and civil rights will henceforth be duly respected,” the Russian committee said in a statement.

The left faction is demanding an official protest from the Bundestag to the government in Kiev because of a statement by the former Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk about MP Sahra Wagenknecht. This emerges from a letter from parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch to Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, which is available to the dpa news agency.

The letter refers to a tweet by Melnyk, who is now Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister. It says: “Oskar Lafontaine and his wife Sahra Wagenknecht are both the worst accomplices of the war criminal Putin, who will be held accountable as such. And very soon.”

This is “a clear threat,” Bartsch wrote to Bas. “Such action by a government representative of Ukraine towards an elected member of the Bundestag is unacceptable and, from our point of view, requires clear steps,” it said. “My co-chair Amira Mohamed Ali and I are therefore asking you, in your capacity as President of the Bundestag, to protest against this threat and to ask the Federal Foreign Office for a statement to the Ukrainian government.”

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk considers China’s role as a mediator in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine to be conceivable. “It’s not unrealistic,” the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany told the Funke media group. “Of course, the Chinese are pursuing their own interests. But I do believe that a just, peaceful solution and the end of hostilities are more in Beijing’s interests than this massive, never-ending earthquake for the entire world order,” said Melnyk.

Regarding the recent phone call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chinese leader Xi Jinping – the first since the war began more than 14 months ago – the diplomat said: “It was a big step forward to strengthen our relations with China and the Russian one stop aggression.”

Of course, China’s position could be different from that of Ukraine, said Melnyk. “For Kiev, the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the occupied territories is a sine qua non,” he stressed. After all, the devil is “in the details,” Melnyk said.

According to a Ukrainian military spokesman, Ukraine continues to control a key supply route to the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. But the situation remains difficult, Serhii Cherevatji, a spokesman for Ukrainian troops in the east, said in an interview with a local news website. The Russians would try again and again to take the so-called “Road of Life” between the destroyed Bakhmut and the city of Chasiv Yar, 17 kilometers away in the west.

According to the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, two civilians have died after a Ukrainian attack on a village in the region. “According to preliminary information, one apartment building was completely destroyed, two other houses were partially destroyed,” wrote Governor Alexander Bogomaz on his Telegram channel. The western Russian border region of Bryansk borders Ukraine to the south. Ukraine has not yet commented on the attack.

The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner has threatened to withdraw troops from Bakhmut because of the high losses. Ukraine welcomes the agreement brokered by the EU Commission on agricultural imports. The developments from Saturday to read.