14/4/2023–|Last updated: 4/14/202303:48 AM (Makkah)
Germany agreed to Poland’s request to hand over Soviet-made fighters to Ukraine, and at the same time Kiev called on its allies to expedite the supply of weapons and ammunition, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised his country’s capabilities in the field of defense industries.
Yesterday, Thursday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that his country had agreed to Poland’s request to deliver five MiG-29 warplanes to Ukraine.
Pistorius said – in a statement – that Berlin agreed to the extradition process, hours after receiving the official request from Warsaw, adding that this confirms that Germany can be relied upon.
Under a bilateral agreement, Poland – a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – needs German approval to deliver Soviet-made fighters to Ukraine, because they are from stocks of former East Germany.
The agreement contains an end-use clause that prohibits Poland from handing over fighter jets to a third party without Germany’s written consent.
Poland is the first NATO member to meet Kiev’s warplane needs. Warsaw recently delivered 8 warplanes of the same type to Ukraine from its own stocks.
Delivery of weapons and ammunition
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Kiev’s Western partners should expedite the delivery of previously pledged weapons and ammunition, and begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly Western-style combat aircraft.
Kuleba added – in a video intervention during a meeting in the Romanian capital, Bucharest – that his country is committed to Russia’s withdrawal from all the territories it occupied, including the Crimea peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.
Simultaneously, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, announced the start of the European Union’s implementation of the first part of its historic initiative to hand over ammunition worth more than one billion dollars to Ukraine.
Zelensky praises
On the other hand, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised Ukraine’s defense manufacturing operations yesterday, on the first anniversary of the sinking of the Russian cruiser “Moskva” in the Black Sea with a Ukrainian-made “Neptune” missile.
In his daily evening speech, Zelensky said that the Neptune missiles showed the professionalism of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, and that this day would be celebrated in the future as the Day of the Weapons and Defense Industry.
The Ukrainian president added that his country is today capable of producing everything from missiles to missiles, and from artillery shells to drones.
Ukraine announced on April 14, 2022 that its forces had hit the Russian cruiser Moskva with anti-ship missiles, but Moscow said at the time that the cruiser was severely damaged after a fire and explosion, and sank when trying to tow it to a port in stormy weather.
Battle of Bakhmut
On the ground, violent clashes continue between Ukrainian forces and the Russian private military group, Wagner, in the center of the city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine, amid conflicting reports about the field situation.
After controlling about three-quarters of the city, Wagner’s forces are trying to advance towards the Ukrainian positions in the western part of the city, which have been subjected to Russian attacks since last summer and have become almost completely destroyed.
The commander of the Russian group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said yesterday that his forces control more than 80% of Bakhmut, adding that it is too early to talk about a complete encirclement of the city, which was inhabited by 70,000 people before the war.
However, the Ukrainian army denied Prigozhin’s statements, in which he claimed control of most of Bakhmut, saying that he controls “much more” than 20% of its area.
Fighting continues in other cities in the Donetsk region, including Marinka and Avdiivka, amid attempts by Russian forces to expand their control in the Donbass region.
In parallel, the Ukrainian forces talked about the deaths and injuries of civilians as a result of Russian bombing in the south and east of the country, and talked about repelling 45 Russian attacks during the past day, which were concentrated in the direction of Bakhmut, Liman, Avdiivka and Marinka in Donetsk canton in the east.
The commander of the Ukrainian joint forces, Sergei Nayef, said that the Ukrainian air defense forces should prepare for a possible Russian missile attack on the Easter holiday, which falls next Sunday.
For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that its forces eliminated hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers in attacks along the front line in the axes of Kobyansk-Kharkov (northeast), Krasny Lyman and Donetsk (east), Zaporizhia and Kherson (south) during the past 24 hours.
European sanctions
On the other hand, the European Union yesterday included the Russian Wagner Group in the list of organizations subject to its sanctions, due to its active participation in what it described as the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
And the European Council, which represents the 27 member states of the bloc, announced that the new inclusion in the sanctions list completes the previous inclusion of the group, noting that the group was added again to the list “due to actions that undermine or endanger the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.”
