War in Ukraine. Latest information on May 25 [papildināts 23:01]

Live text – short and concise on the highlights of Russia’s war in Ukraine on May 25. For three months now, Ukraine has been heroically defending its land against the aggressor’s invasion.

23.01. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw from Ukraine immediately.

22.03. Latvian military experts recommend that the Ukrainian army withdraw from Severodonetsk so as not to be besieged. More here.

20.33. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleb at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday accused NATO of “doing nothing” to stop Russia’s invasion and praised the European Union (EU) for its support for Kiev. “NATO as an alliance, as an institution, has been completely pushed aside and is doing literally nothing. I am sorry to say that,” Kuleba said at the World Economic Forum. But he praised Brussels for its “revolutionary decisions, which even they themselves did not expect to make.”

20.22. The Kremlin is desperate for the Russian war in Ukraine, but its outcome will largely depend on the Western countries’ ability and willingness to supply Ukraine with new weapons. Kristo Grozev, an influential and award-winning investigative journalist of the international investigative journalism project “Bellingcat”, pointed out in the Latvian Television (LTV) program “Panorama of the World”.

19.29. Ukrainian director Maxim Nakonechnyi came to the screening of his film at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday with a poster condemning Russia. Nakonechny and the team went to the screening of their film “Butterfly Vision” accompanied by the sound of a siren. They rolled out a poster saying “Russians are killing Ukrainians. Do you find it offensive or disturbing to talk about this genocide?”.

18.57. The United States has provided new $ 4 million in support of a program to clear Ukrainian mines and unexploded ordnance. According to European Truth, the US Embassy in Ukraine announced this in Twitter. “This week, the United States provided new $ 4 million in support to the Halo Trust in Ukraine, which will involve 10 teams to clear areas of Russian mines and unexploded ordnance so that families can return home safely to their communities,” the U.S. embassy said.

18.01. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleb has called on the West to “kill Russian exports” and not finance the Kremlin’s war machine, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. “My message is quite simple. Kill Russian exports,” Kuleba said. “Stop buying from Russia. Don’t let them make money they can invest in a war machine that destroys, kills, rapes and tortures people in Ukraine,” Kuleba urged. However, he accepted that the export ban should not cover “critical matters that the West needs”.

17.18. On Thursday, May 26, during the sitting of the Saeima, a remote address of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to the Latvian Parliament is planned, the parliamentary press service informed. The President of Ukraine will address the Saeima at the invitation of the Speaker of the Parliament Ināra Mūrniece (NA). The speech will be held remotely, and it will be possible to follow it on the Saeima website.

16.35. On Wednesday, the Russian State Duma passed a law on the abolition of the upper age limit for concluding a contract for service in the Russian armed forces in all three readings.

16.16. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a decree that will simplify the procedure for acquiring Russian citizenship for residents of Zaporizhia and Kherson regions in Ukraine. The Kherson region is fully controlled by Russian troops, while the Zaporizhia region is partly controlled. Putin passed a similar decree in 2019, making it easier for residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (“DTR”) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (“LTR”) to obtain Russian citizenship.

15.50. European Council President Charles Michel said on Wednesday he was confident that the European Union (EU) would succeed in reaching an agreement on Russia’s oil embargo, despite Hungary’s objections. Michel said that European leaders were working very hard to find a solution, adding that he had discussed the issue himself a lot. “I remain confident that we will be able to resolve this issue,” Michel said in a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalen Andesson ahead of the summit in Stockholm on Monday and Tuesday in Stockholm.

15.20. The European Commission (EC) on Wednesday proposed new rules that would make it harder for Russian oligarchs to evade sanctions and pave the way for the confiscation of their assets to help rebuild Ukraine after the war. “As long as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continues, it is vital that the EU’s restrictive measures are fully implemented and that violations of these measures must not be allowed to pay off,” the EC said in a statement. “The aim of today’s proposals is to ensure that the seizure of assets by natural and legal persons in breach of restrictive measures can be effective in the future,” the EC statement said.

15.03. Since the start of the war, at least 238 children have been killed and 433 injured in various attacks by Russian troops in Ukraine, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine said on Wednesday. The attacks on Russian soldiers killed or injured 149 children in the Donetsk region, 116 in the Kiev region, 104 in the Kharkiv region, 68 in the Chernihiv region, 50 in the Luhansk region, 49 in the Kherson region, 45 in the Mykolaiv region and 28 in the Sumy region. , In the city of Kiev – 16 and in the Zhytomyr region – 15.

14.47. The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense and the State Army will supply Ukraine with 20 M113 armored vehicles, ten military trucks and ten SUVs worth a total of 15.5 million euros. Ukraine has already received 200 of the same armored vehicles from the United States, the ministry said. Lithuanian Minister of Defense Arvīds Anušausks reminded that Lithuania delivered armaments to Ukraine even before February 24, when Russia started a repeated invasion of the country.

14.13. Russian troops invading Ukraine send large numbers of troops, artillery and aviation to the Luhansk region, the US War Research Institute (ISW) said. It has indicated that troops are being relocated from a number of other sectors of the front, withdrawing forces from Izhya, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhia. The occupiers, by all accounts, are trying to surround several small groups of Ukrainian forces at the same time – in the Severodonetsk region, in Bahmut and Lysichansk, around Zoloti and Avdijivka.

13.23. The exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine will take place only after the defenders of the Mariupol plant “Azovstal” have been convicted in Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said on Wednesday.

“All cases will be heard after all those who have been taken prisoner have been duly convicted, a verdict has been handed down, and then there may be some other steps. Until then, all the talks about the exchange are premature,” Russian news agencies told reporters.

13.16. On the night of May 25, Russian troops carried out an air strike on the town of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, hitting a residential area, informs the mayor of Kramatorsk, Oleksandr Honcharenko. The mayor reports that there are no victims.

12.32. The West is still divided on the extent to which it will support Ukraine in its war with Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.

“Unity is about weapons. I have a question – is there unity in practice? I don’t see it. We would be very superior to Russia if we were truly united,” the president said in a video discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Ukraine.

12.05. It is unlikely that the West will decide in favor of unblocking Ukraine’s Black Sea ports by force, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Wednesday.

“If NATO did not close the skies over Ukraine in the most tragic times of war, why should they now unlock the Black Sea so that Ukrainian agricultural products can be exported without hindrance? I wholeheartedly welcome such a decision, but I do not think there will be enough for the West and others. strength and masculinity to find a solution to this issue with methods of force, “the minister of the Davos forum at the Ukrainian breakfast stated.

11.28. Three maritime initiatives The 12 member states of the European Union (EU) support Ukraine’s accelerated accession to the EU, President Egils Levits emphasized at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

11.27. The loss of life force of Russian troops in Ukraine has reached about 29,450 soldiers by Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian Army General Staff reports.

Since the start of the invasion on February 24, Russian forces have lost 1,305 tanks, 3,213 armored personnel carriers, 606 cannons, 201 multi-barrel jet launchers, 93 anti-aircraft guns, 206 aircraft, 170 helicopters, 491 unmanned aerial vehicles, 112 helicopters and 2217 cars. and 44 specialized vehicles.

10.32. More than 200 militants in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DTR), established in eastern Ukraine with Russian support, are refusing to go to war in the region’s second separatist, the Lugansk People’s Republic, Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazanski told Telegram.

09.56. On the morning of May 25, Russian forces fired three rockets at the city of Kryvyi Rih in the Dnipropetrovsk region, causing significant damage to a factory, Valentin Reznichenko, the head of the district’s military administration, said.

09.25. Most likely, Russia is currently preparing to close a kind of ceasefire with Ukraine, while hoping to deprive it of several areas where there has been active warfare so far, Jānis Sārts, head of NATO’s Center for Strategic Communications Excellence, commented in an interview.

He acknowledged that the war in Ukraine is currently stagnant – at the strategic level, Russia’s offensive has lost its momentum and there may be a moment when Ukraine will be able to take the initiative in many sectors of the front line.

08.20. The supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine is the best investment in maintaining stability in the world, stressed the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The situation in Donbass is extremely complicated. In fact, all the forces that were still left for Russia have been transferred to attack there. Limana, Popasna, Severodonecka, Slovjanska – the occupiers want to destroy everything there,” Zelensky said.

08.05. Russian politicians and the state media are beginning to prepare their citizens for a longer war in Ukraine with information disseminated in the public sphere, Elīna Lange-Ionatamišvili, a senior expert in public diplomacy at NATO’s Strategic Communication Center of Excellence, said in an interview with Latvijas Radio.

07.08. The Czech Republic has handed over impact helicopters to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and, together with Slovakia, is providing repairs to dozens of Ukrainian armored vehicles, the US Wall Street Journal reports, citing the Pentagon.

05.05. Germany had promised to supply Leopard tanks to Poland in place of the tanks that Poland had delivered to Ukraine, but had not kept that promise, Polish President Andrzej Duda was quoted as saying by the German newspaper Die Welt.

02.51. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could mark the beginning of World War III, so the best way for the West to maintain a free civilization is to defeat the forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin, financier billionaire George Soros said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

00.10. Billionaire George Soros has blamed European gas chancellor Angela Merkel’s “special agreements” with Moscow for Europe’s gas dependence.

–