“We are prepared for the worst in Ukraine, the world must help us now”
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Federal Foreign Office calls on all Germans to leave Ukraine
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Against the background of the escalating conflict with Russia, Germans are supposed to leave Ukraine. The Federal Foreign Office has called for this. The US is already pulling people out. For fear of a military escalation, the telephone wires are now running hot.
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Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko warns that Vladimir Putin is striving for world power. The US is also calling on US OSCE staff to leave Ukraine. Australia is closing its embassy in Kiev. More in the live ticker.
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Dhe Mayor of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, appealed to Germany and the world to stand closely with Ukraine one day before the visit of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “We are prepared for the worst in Ukraine, the world must help us now,” Klitschko told the “Bild am Sonntag” according to the preliminary report.
Putin is striving for world power and after Ukraine it is the turn of the Baltic states. “We are just the beginning! When Olaf Scholz and other heads of state speak to Vladimir Putin now, they should make one thing clear to him: Our entire country will defend itself against an attack and it will have serious consequences.”
All developments in the live ticker:
2:24 am – USA: American OSCE staff should also leave Ukraine
The US has also called on the US staff of the OSCE Observer Mission in Ukraine to leave the country in the face of a possible Russian invasion. The corresponding travel advice for US citizens from last week also applies to the US employees of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said a spokesman for the US State Department on Saturday (local time). The OSCE did not initially answer the question of whether the mission in the crisis area in Donbass would continue.
The US State Department said the OSCE observers were spread across the country, including in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine. They are highly endangered. “While we strongly support the important work of the Special Monitoring Mission, the safety of U.S. citizens is our top priority,” it said.
1:05 am – Australia closes Ukrainian embassy
Australia has temporarily closed its embassy in Kyiv and evacuated staff. Australia’s Foreign Ministry says the embassy’s work will continue in a temporary office in the city of Lviv, in western Ukraine near the border with Poland.
12:48 a.m. – Moscow: Russian warship drives away US submarine near Kuril Islands
According to information from Moscow, a Russian warship drove away a US submarine near the Kuril Islands. The destroyer “Marshal Shaposhnikov” has tracked down a US submarine in Russian waters near the Kuril Islands, the Defense Ministry said in Moscow on Saturday. After the submarine ignored requests to heave to, the Russian destroyer “took appropriate action,” it said without further explanation.
The submarine then left Russian waters “at top speed”. As a result of the incident, the US defense attaché had been summoned to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Moscow said.
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The US military, however, said the “Russian claims about our operations in their territorial waters” were “untrue.” US Indo-Pacific Command spokesman Kyle Raines declined to comment on the exact locations of US submarines . However, he emphasized: “We fly, sail and operate safely in international waters.”
12:01 a.m. – Chairman of the supervisory board: US warnings about Ukraine plausible
The chairman of the Bundestag’s intelligence control committee, Roderich Kiesewetter, takes the US warnings about a possible impending Russian attack on Ukraine seriously. “Unfortunately, I think the US intelligence service information is plausible,” said the CDU MP to the “Handelsblatt”. He referred to Russia’s military maneuvers with Belarus, which began on Thursday, during which Russia had deployed an additional 30,000 troops and warplanes near Ukraine and landing craft to the Black Sea.
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“From a military and geostrategic point of view, Russia has a time window until the planned end of the maneuver on February 20, but also after that, in order to intervene militarily in Ukraine or to occupy certain parts that are geostrategically important from Putin’s point of view, such as the Mariupol region,” said Kiesewetter. The decisive factor now is whether the escalation can be prevented by “credible deterrence” and “clever diplomacy”.
