Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh Sdgh

Ukraine live blog: ++ Melnyk should represent Ukraine at the UN ++

by Mayra

Ukraine live blog: ++ Melnyk should represent Ukraine at the UN ++


live blog

As of: December 21, 2024 11:35 p.m

The former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Melnyk, will take up this position at the United Nations in the future. According to Russian information, troops have taken over a town in eastern Ukraine. Saturday’s live blog for reading.

12/21/2024 • 11:35 p.m

End of live blog

We are ending our reporting for today. Thank you for your interest.

The former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, is to become his country’s new representative to the United Nations in New York. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the transfer of the current ambassador to Brazil in a video message.

“The UN must play a stronger role to end the Russian war of aggression and to achieve a just peace for Ukraine including security guarantees,” Melnyk told the editorial network Germany (RND). He wanted to work on this in New York, “side by side.” “our German friends and allies”. Germany has a crucial role to play in forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his war of aggression.

As ambassador in Berlin, Melnyk openly criticized the federal government for what he considered to be too hesitant arms aid for his country, which was attacked by Russia. He returned to Kyiv in October 2022 and became deputy foreign minister. In June 2023 he moved to Brazil as ambassador.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has threatened further attacks on military facilities in Russia in retaliation for Russian airstrikes. “We will definitely continue to attack Russian military targets with drones and missiles,” he said in his evening video address from Kiev.

Ukraine is using more and more self-produced weapons. It goes against “the very military bases, the Russian military infrastructure that is used for this terror against our people.” By terror he meant the recent Russian air strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with CIA chief William Burns in Kiev. “Bill Burns paid his last visit to Ukraine as CIA director,” Zelensky announced on the Telegram online service.

Since the start of the Russian war of aggression in February 2022, he has met with Burns frequently, the president added. However, the governments in Kyiv and Washington kept most of the meetings secret. “He and I had many meetings during this war and I am grateful for his help,” Zelensky said. “Usually such meetings are not publicly announced, and all of our meetings – in Ukraine, in other European countries, in America and in other parts of the world – took place without official information.”

Zelensky posted a photo of himself shaking Burns’ hand. The last confirmed meeting between Zelensky and Burns took place in the summer of 2023. When US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, Burns will give up the powerful post of CIA director.

After Ukrainian rockets hit the small Russian town of Rylsk in the Kursk region on Friday, regional governor Alexander Chinshtein revised the initially reported death toll from six to five. There are still 88 houses on site without heating. Twelve people were injured. The Ukrainian army unexpectedly launched an offensive across the Russian border in the summer and has been occupying parts of the Kursk region ever since. Rylsk serves as a staging area for Russian units in their counterattack.

Conflict parties as a source

In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian parties to the conflict cannot be directly verified by an independent body.

A court in Russia has sentenced a man to 19 years in prison for allegedly spying for the US Federal Police FBI. The court in Orenburg found the man, who was born in 1993, guilty of several charges, including “high treason,” according to the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB. The investigation “confirmed that he had established a confidential collaboration with representatives of the US intelligence services.” He must therefore be imprisoned in a penal colony under “difficult conditions”.

In her own words, BSW chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht does not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin would attack other countries in Europe after the war of aggression against Ukraine. “I don’t know what Putin wants. But Russia would not be able to achieve that militarily,” Wagenknecht told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. An army that fails to take Kiev is “unlikely to overrun the Baltics.”

“I consider the fact that Putin is planning to restore the old Soviet Union through military conquest to be a daring thesis given the real equipment of the Russian army,” Wagenknecht continued. She condemns the Russian war. “But it could have been prevented if the red lines repeatedly mentioned by the Russians and Western diplomats had been respected.” The war was triggered by the stationing of the US military in Ukraine, said Wagenknecht.

Hungary is holding talks with Russia and Ukraine about continuing gas deliveries via Ukraine. Although these are now being sent to Hungary via the Turkstream pipeline, the country does not want to give up the transport route via Ukraine, said Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Slovakia and industry associations from Austria are also campaigning for imports to continue via Ukraine. The gas pipeline through Ukraine is one of the last important transport routes for Russian natural gas to Europe. Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria in particular still obtain a large proportion of their natural gas via this route. But the transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expires at the end of the year. Ukraine has announced several times that it does not want to extend this contract due to the war between the two countries.

A Ukrainian drone attack According to Russian authorities, it hit several residential buildings in the city of Kazan. The city said on Telegram that fires broke out as a result of the attack. Nothing is known about the victims so far. Kazan is more than 800 kilometers from the Russian capital Moscow. For security reasons, the city canceled major events at the weekend.

According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, the Russian armed forces have taken control of another town in eastern Ukraine. The village of Kostiantynopolske in the Donetsk region had been taken. This could not initially be verified independently. However, Russian troops have advanced rapidly in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks.

Conflict parties as a source

In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian parties to the conflict cannot be directly verified by an independent body.

Map of Ukraine and Russia, light hatched: territories occupied by Russia

According to the aviation regulator, three airports in Russia have temporarily suspended operations due to Ukrainian drone attacks. The airport in Kazan, a city 800 kilometers east of Moscow, was affected, Rosawiazia said on Telegram. According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Kazan was attacked in three waves in the morning.

The state news agency Tass reports that there were eight drone attacks, including six on residential buildings. According to local authorities, there are no reports of victims. In Izhevsk, a smaller city northeast of Kazan, and in Saratov, 650 kilometers south of Kazan, aircraft take-offs and landings were also suspended, it said.

As a Christmas gesture, Ukraine and Russia exchanged letters and packages for prisoners of war. The ombudsman of the Ukrainian parliament, Dmytro Lubinets, and the Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova met in Belarus. They didn’t name the location. It was the first publicly known meeting of senior state representatives from the warring parties in a long time. Moskalkowa wrote on Telegram that 1,500 Christmas packages for prisoners of war and letters from relatives were exchanged.

Lubinets said that lists of prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians held in Russia had also been handed over. The campaign also involved the return of more than 500 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers from Russia. This had already been communicated previously. Both sides mentioned mediation by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) says he does not plan to deploy Bundeswehr soldiers to Ukraine before the end of the war. “As long as the war is not over, there will be no German soldiers on Ukrainian soil,” Pistorius told the newspapers of the Funke media group, according to the preliminary report. However, he considered deploying the Bundeswehr if peacekeepers had to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine.

“As the largest NATO country in Europe and the largest economy in Europe, Germany could not stand by and remain uninvolved.” However, Pistorius also said: “The question arises when there should be a ceasefire or a peace – and when it is clear what that looks like.”

12/21/2024 • 11:24 am

Zelenskyj thanks for Iris-T

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj thanked Germany for another Iris-T anti-aircraft system. He called it a response to Ukraine’s request for at least 19 more systems to protect its power plants. “We have now returned from Brussels with new agreements on air defense,” Zelensky said in his evening video message from Kiev.

On Thursday at the EU summit in Brussels, Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed the handover of another Iris-T to Ukraine. This was a delivery that had been announced for some time.

Chancellor Scholz has confirmed that, despite all the criticism, he wants to continue to speak on the telephone with Russian President Putin. Germany and Estonia have called for more military aid for Ukraine.

Ukraine live blog: ++ Melnyk should represent Ukraine at the UN ++

FIRST TIME REACTIONS:

Be the first to leave us a comment – Ukraine live blog: ++ Melnyk should represent Ukraine at the UN ++
, down the comment section. click allow to follow this topic and get firsthand daily updates.

Ukraine live blog: ++ Melnyk should represent Ukraine at the UN ++

Related Posts

Leave a Comment