Zelensky demands that Germany adopt a clearer position

LAST UPDATE: 08.20

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last night demanded that German Chancellor Olaf Solz take a clearer stance on his country’s war with Russia.

“We need Chancellor Soltz to reassure us that Germany supports Ukraine. He and his government must decide,” Zelensky said in an interview with German state television ZDF.

“Berlin should not seek a balance between its relations with Ukraine and its relations with Russia,” he said.

“Germany started arms deliveries later than our neighboring countries. That is a fact,” Mr Zelensky said in a complaining tone. At first, Germany and France supported Ukraine only politically and rhetorically, he said.

Earlier yesterday, Chancellor Soltz dismissed criticism that Germany was sending heavy weapons to Kyiv too slowly. “We will hand over all the weapons we have approved,” Soltz said, noting that their future Ukrainian pilots would have to be trained before surrendering.

“It’s a heavy weapon. So you have to be able to use it, you have to be trained for it,” said the German chancellor, adding that the Ukrainian military is undergoing training in Germany to operate the weapons it will receive.

Earlier in the day, Mr Soltz’s office declined to confirm – or refute – information that the chancellor would travel to Kyiv on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

The “human cost” of the battle for Severodonetsk is “terrible”

The “human cost” of the battle for Severodonetsk, a city of strategic importance in eastern Ukraine, is “frightening,” Zelensky said, as Russian forces have expanded their control in recent days, but Kyiv says they have not. fully understand.

“The human cost of this battle is very high for us. It’s just scary,” Zelensky said in his daily evening sermon to Ukrainians, which was uploaded to the Telegram platform.

“The Battle of Donbass will certainly go down in military history as one of the fiercest in Europe,” he added.

“As many as 100 Ukrainian soldiers” are killed and “500 are injured daily” in fighting with the Russian military, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Thursday.

Mr Zelensky, for his part, said on June 1 that his army was losing “60 to 100” soldiers a day.

“We are facing the ultimate evil,” he said last night. Before adding: “we have no choice but to advance and liberate our country”, as the areas in the south and east occupied by the Russian troops have been “excluded from civilization” as the Moscow forces have cut “all communications “with the outside world.

Mr Zelensky has once again called on the West to supply the Ukrainian army with “more weapons” as Moscow forces occupy most of Severodonetsk and continue to pound Ukrainian artillery.

Earlier in the day, Luhansk’s Ukrainian governor, Sergiy Haidai, said that “70-80% of the city” had fallen to the Russians and that the “three bridges” connecting Sheverontonyevsk with the Lisichansk twin had now been demolished. “.

SOURCE: AMPE