Evacuations resumed from Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, where a rocket attack killed 52 people at a train station on Friday. Read below the basic updates from this afternoon and find more on our blog here.
Kyiv is preparing for “big battles” in the east
Adviser to the Ukrainian president Mykhaylo Podolyak said Ukraine must defeat Russia in the eastern Donbass region, where Moscow controls two separatist territories, before a meeting between Ukrainian leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Ukraine is ready for big battles. Ukraine must win them, including Donbass. And once that happens, Ukraine will have a stronger bargaining position,” he told national television. “After that the presidents will meet. It may take two weeks, three.” It comes after President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that his country was ready for a Russian attack.
Germany blocked the offer to send tanks to Ukraine
The German government is facing criticism again after it allegedly rejected an offer by an arms company to repair 100 tanks it will send to the Ukrainian front line. Rheinmetall, an arms manufacturer, said 100 Marder tanks standing around its plant could be ready for battle, allowing the German armed forces to send an equivalent number of operational vehicles to Ukraine. According to a report in the Bild newspaper, the Ministry of Defense replied that the decommissioned tanks would take a long time to be renovated, leaving its forces unable to fulfill their obligations to NATO. However, the ministry did not send anyone to inspect the tanks before rejecting the offer, according to Bild. Read the full story here.
Rocket attack destroys the big airport in Dnipro
One of Ukraine’s largest airports was razed to the ground when Russian forces fired rockets into the Luhansk and Dnipro regions of the country. Valentin Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said that the latest Russian attack on the Dnipro international airport had left him and the infrastructure around him was “destroyed” with five wounded.
