Updated on 12/20/2022 at 11:34 pm
- Day 300 of the Russian war against Ukraine:
- Ukrainian President Zelenskyy apparently wants to travel to the United States.
- Before that, he had visited the frontline city of Bakhmut.
According to the AP news agency, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is preparing for a trip to Washington on Wednesday. Two US Congressional sources and a person familiar with the matter confirmed the plans to the AP. They wished to remain anonymous due to the highly sensitive nature of the information.
The planned visit would include a speech to Congress and a meeting with US President Joe Biden.
It would be Zelenskyy’s first known trip abroad since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against his country. The prerequisite for his entry is that security conditions allow travel to the US capital. It could also be canceled at the last minute due to security concerns, AP sources said.
Congress is about to vote on a comprehensive budget for the current fiscal year. That includes $45 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine.
Troops visit the frontline city of Bakhmut
Earlier, on the 300th day of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy had given a special signal: on Tuesday, he made a surprise visit to the hotly disputed eastern city of Bakhmut. Meanwhile, the capital Kyiv continued to struggle to restore power supplies, which had been badly damaged by Russian drone strikes.
More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered more airstrikes on power plants and power grids, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine sitting in the cold without electricity. This tactic is seen as a reaction to the fact that Russia has suffered repeated setbacks in the combat zones in recent months.
Zelenskyy brings medals and gifts to the front
Only on Monday did Zelenskyy describe the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine as the “hottest spot” along the 1,300-kilometer front. A day later, he himself visited the site, which had been hotly fought between Russian and Ukrainian troops for months.
“He visited the top positions, awarded the fighters with medals and valuable gifts,” his spokesman Serhiy Nykyforov was quoted as saying by state broadcaster Freedom. After that, the 44-year-old head of state left the small town of the Donetsk region.
Zelenskyi has not left his country since the war broke out on February 24. For appearances on the world political stage – for example at the G7 summit in Elmau, Bavaria – he has always logged in digitally from Ukraine. The Ukrainian president has traveled to the combat zone several times – in stark contrast to Putin, who has never been to the front.
Water, electricity and heating failures in Kyiv
Despite constant repairs, there were still serious problems with the power supply in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Sometimes parts of the metro system stopped, as Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced via Telegram. The water supply also failed due to an emergency shutdown of the pumps. In connection with this, there were also failures in district heating at temperatures close to the freezing point.
According to Klitschko, due to the recent Russian drone strikes, only 50% of the electricity requirements of the city of three million people could be met. Since October, the Russian army has been targeting Ukraine’s power supply with rockets and drones.
London: Putin wants to shift responsibility for war
According to British intelligence experts, Putin is trying to take responsibility for the costly invasion of Ukraine off himself. For this purpose, a visit to the headquarters of the so-called military special operations was used, according to the daily publication of the British Ministry of Defense on Twitter. During the visit, which was followed by cameras, the Kremlin chief was probably also concerned with dispelling rumors that Chief of Staff Valeri Gerasimov would be fired.
In a video address on Tuesday night, Putin admitted that the situation in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia was difficult. These are the parts of Ukraine annexed by Moscow in violation of international law. Putin has called for more effort from his country’s security forces, saying one of his most important tasks is to protect citizens in Russia’s “new regions”. Russia has violently conquered and occupied much of these areas and is now struggling to defend them against Ukrainian counterattacks.
Wave of layoffs among Russian IT specialists since the start of the war
According to the authorities, about 100,000 Russian IT specialists have left their homeland since the beginning of the war. About one in 10 employees of IT companies have left the country and not returned, Digitalization Minister Maxut Schadajew said in Moscow at a parliamentary hearing. However, 80 percent of them are still employed by Russian companies.
In total, hundreds of thousands of Russians left the country. A first wave came shortly after Putin’s declaration of war, the second after the president declared partial mobilization in Russia. The government and parliament in Moscow are now discussing a law that would ban those who have left the country from continuing to work for Russian companies. In this way, it is intended to deprive possible conscientious objectors of the basis for their existence abroad.
EU saves gas – Moscow: More oil orders from Germany
The European Union has exceeded the gas savings target it set because of the Russian war. From August to the end of November, Member States consumed around 20 percent less than the average for the same period over the last five years, according to data from the statistics office Eurostat. A savings of 15 percent was announced. In Germany, savings reached 25%, with consumption falling more in Finland (-52.7%).
According to Russian information, however, Germany and Poland have also ordered oil from Russia for the period after the turn of the year. There was no confirmation from Berlin and Warsaw. An embargo on Russian oil delivered by sea has been in place in the EU since early December because of the Russian war. However, Germany and Poland have declared that they also want to voluntarily relinquish oil from the Russian pipeline. (mss/dpa) © dpa
Updated on 12/20/2022 at 5:42 pm
Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned fiction into reality and has been Ukraine’s president for almost three years, when his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, ordered his troops to invade and take over the neighboring country in February 2022. Since then, the world has looked to Ukraine and he saw Zelenskyy, a man resolutely facing his responsibility for an entire people. Zelenskyy 2022 will receive several awards for this.