BERLIN/KIEV (own report) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Germany today, Friday, for talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The Ukrainian leader claims to have drawn up a plan for a ‘victory for Ukraine’ over Russia. Zelensky has sharply criticised Berlin’s announcement that it will not be providing any further billions in funding beyond the pledges already made to his country. He is likely to urge Scholz to step back from the decision. He also plans to lobby US President Joe Biden for new funds soon. Zelensky is now advancing the idea of a plan for Ukrainian victory. Developments on the ground, however, do not look good for Kiev. The Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region is failing, and the Russian capture of Pokrovsk appears imminent. The city is a logistical hub. Its loss would bring the Ukrainian armed forces much closer to defeat. At the same time, Russia is destroying Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, so the country may be facing another mass exodus. This would deprive the economy of urgently needed workers but also cause growing discontent in EU countries as the war has negative impacts on their populations. Moscow is again saying it is willing to negotiate. Read more

BERLIN/WARSAW/KIEV (own report) – Germany’s close allies are blocking the investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. It has even been designated a “legitimate target”. If the attack was carried out with the clear intention of preventing the sale of Russian natural gas to Western Europe, then it was completely justified, stated Czech President Petr Pavel last week. Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, had previously said that anyone who had ever favoured the construction of one of the two Nord Stream pipelines should now “apologise and ... keep quiet”. Indeed, Poland has been undermining the investigations by German authorities for some time. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) now attributes the attack to a group of private individuals, including several Ukrainians. Yet verification remains far off. According to media reports, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and possibly also Polish officials were aware of the attack plans. Yet experts still have serious doubts as to plausibility of the official German theory. Despite strong arguments in favour of a state perpetrator, most likely the United States, Germany will not conduct its investigations in this direction. Read more

BERLIN/KIEV (own report) - Following Berlin’s announcement that it would have to limit funding for Ukraine, Kiev is demanding direct access to Russian state assets frozen in the West. The German government recently decided against making any new spending commitments in support of Ukraine beyond the budget funds already earmarked for Kiev. The Western powers want to provide additional finance by syphoning off the interest accrued on the frozen assets of the Russian central bank kept in Europe. The Kiev government says this won’t be enough. It insists on seizing the assets themselves. The problem, however, is that such a move would set a dangerous precedent. Enabling the theft of foreign state property would have global consequences. The assets of Western countries held abroad would be at risk. The underlying problem driving this situation is that, despite enormous financial transfers, Ukraine remains effectively bankrupt. Hopes of a ceasefire and reconstruction were recently raised by statements from President Volodymyr Zelensky and the dispatch of his Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, to China. But they have since been dashed following Ukraine’s attack on Russian territory in the Kursk region. The attack has made talks impossible, diplomats are quoted as saying. Read more

BERLIN/BERN/KIEV (own report) - The Ukraine conference in Switzerland, announced with great fanfare in the West, turned out an abject failure on key points. A huge effort was expended on staging the event. More than 160 invitations were made but, despite diplomatic pressure, only 92 countries and eight international organisations managed to attend. The European Union alone appeared in three different guises (Commission, Council and Parliament) along with all the member states. The final declaration was signed by only 78 states. The heavyweights of the Global South – such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia – refused to participate. The outcome falls well short of the conference goals pursued by Western governments. The so-called “peace summit” was designed to create an overwhelming majority in favour of Kiev’s demands, thus applying mounting diplomatic pressure on Moscow and placing Ukraine, politically, in a “position of strength” for any future peace talks. Last year, the West tried to achieve its goals on the battlefield through military aid, but the Ukrainian military offensive failed. Read more

BERLIN/KIEV (own report) – As Russia’s current offensive gains momentum in Ukraine, politicians in Berlin are debating the merits of deploying European soldiers on Ukrainian territory. Last week, Lithuania announced that it was ready to send military trainers to the war zone without delay and was only waiting for a request from Kiev. Estonia has said that it is prepared to demonstrate military presence of its own on Ukrainian territory as part of a hoped-for “coalition of the willing”. Its focus would be on air defence capabilities. In Germany, the direct deployment of German troops is, with the exception of a few hardliners in Berlin, not publicly advocated. This is partly due to the important state elections upcoming next autumn. However, politicians from the CDU, FDP and Greens are backing intervention proposals that envisage the stationing of air defence systems on Polish and Romanian territory that can shoot down Russian offensive weapons over Ukraine. Warnings that this step would be tantamount to entering the war are being played down. At the same time, discussions are taking place on post-ceasefire scenarios, which might see the deployment of EU or NATO troops in Ukraine. Read more

BERLIN/KIEV (own report) – Ahead of the meeting of G7 foreign ministers, beginning today on the island of Capri, there are frank warnings of a Ukrainian defeat on the battlefield. Alarm is being voiced both in Ukraine and in Western capitals. Kiev is “at great risk” of losing the war in the course of this year, declared a high-ranking British military officer at the weekend. Senior Ukrainian officers had previously warned that the Russian armed forces could soon be able to smash open sections of the front. A Russian advance into large parts of eastern and even central Ukraine is no longer ruled out. Experts criticise the way Western accounts have “talked up the situation in Ukraine from the outset”. The Ukrainian officers complain in particular that the impact of new Western weaponry is frequently overestimated – often based on a traditional bullishness and self-certainty. It is now clear, for example, that the Russian military has learnt how to eliminate Storm Shadow or SCALP cruise missiles, targeting them with a high hit rate. The G7 foreign ministers are now looking at options for preventing a collapse of the Ukrainian front. Foreign Minister Baerbock is proposing a worldwide “mapping of all Patriot systems” to secure faster supplies from third countries. Read more

BERLIN/KIEV (own report) – The first, almost successful, negotiations to end the Ukraine war began two years ago yesterday, on 28 February 2022. We have been reminded of this by a recently published study by a military expert: retired Bundeswehr Colonel Wolfgang Richter, a former military adviser to the German missions to the UN and the OSCE. Those talks opened a path to compromise in late March 2022. The deal would have centred on neutrality and EU accession for Ukraine, and Russian troop withdrawal. The talks brought an early peace “within reach”, argues Richter, who now works for the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP). The main reason for their failure, apart from the “resistance” from Ukrainian nationalists, was the “massive influence exerted by representatives of Western governments”, who vigorously urged Kiev to continue the war. Moreover, the New York Times has reported on a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin for a freeze on frontline movements and a ceasefire as early as autumn 2022, and then again in September 2023. Kiev and the West have consistently rejected these offers. They insist on seeking to achieve victory at all costs. It is from this stance that Europe is now discussing the deployment of boots on the ground. Read more

KIEV/BERLIN/UNTERLUESS (own report) – The Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Carsten Breuer, has held talks in Kiev with the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Olexander Syrskyj. The discussions covered future German arms supplies. Syrskyi had replaced the previous army chief Valery Zaluzhnyi a week earlier. Zaluzhnyi’s relationship with President Volodymyr Zelensky had been considered irreparably damaged since autumn 2023, especially after Zaluzhnyi had declared Ukraine’s June offensive a failure. Indeed, in his view, formulated in an article for the British Economist magazine, the war was de facto unwinnable. Zelensky has now replaced him with Syrskyi, a military leader who is nicknamed the “butcher”. He has a reputation for ruthlessly sending large numbers of soldiers to certain death. His appointment has unsurprisingly been greeted with dismay by elements in the Ukrainian military. The armed forces are already suffering from a shortage of personnel. It is reported that units on the front line have barely 35 per cent of the personnel numbers originally planned. Ukrainian forces also lack ammunition. Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to attend the laying of the foundation stone for another Rheinmetall ammunition factory in Unterlüß on 12 January. Read more

KIEV/THE HAGUE/BERLIN (own report) - The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague has largely dismissed a lawsuit brought by Ukraine against Russia. The ruling clearly runs counter to Western interests, now for the second time in just a few days. Kiev initiated proceedings against Moscow back in 2017. The charges were mainly based on accusations of Russian financial support for eastern Ukrainian separatists and repression of Ukrainian and Tatar minorities in Crimea. The ICJ does not share this interpretation of events. It merely accuses Moscow of insufficiently promoting the Ukrainian language in school teaching in Crimea. This major institution of international law cannot now be relied on to support Western claims. In response, Berlin, Washington and NATO have begun to work on setting up parallel structures. A special tribunal is to be established to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine. It is to be installed solely for this purpose, and thus exclude potential prosecutions for waging wars of aggression, in violation of international law, against Iraq or the former Yugoslavia. The West is effectively discarding the idea of equality of all states before international law. Read more

KIEV/BERLIN/BRUSSELS (own report) – In its efforts to procure more funding for Ukraine, the European Union is adopting unusually aggressive methods. The big powers in the EU have chosen a path of escalation and growing tension within the Union. In order to force Hungary to agree to the 50 billion euro aid package for Kiev at tomorrow’s special EU summit, Brussels has threatened Budapest with a severe economic attack. By making an official declaration to the effect that all EU funding for Hungary might be cut, the European Council intends to trigger a shock on the financial markets. This could cause the Hungarian currency to crash and do severe damage to Hungary’s economy and people. Brussels also plans to tap future profits from Russian assets frozen in the EU. Expropriated profits would then be used to support Kiev in its war. Critics warn that this would set a dangerous precedent, signalling to future foreign investors that money and assets in the EU are not safe. Moreover, other countries, including Russia, could then retaliate and recoup their losses by seizing EU assets on their territory. The Brussels initiatives come in the context of Ukraine’s budget deficit reaching 36 billion US dollars last year, while the United States is increasingly unwilling to underwrite the mounting costs. The government in Kiev is left with the EU as its “lifebelt”. Read more