Melnyk told a German media outlet that the Chinese are “pursuing their own interests but a peaceful solution and end of hostilities are more in line with Beijing’s interests than this huge never-ending earthquake for the entire world order.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping – the first since the war began just over 14 months ago – “was a big step forward in strengthening our relations with China and ending Russian aggression,” Melnyk said.
The former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany pointed out however that “for Kiev, the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the occupied territories is a sine qua non.”
Russian troops have hit the city of Nikopol with artillery in the night, in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the east of the country. This was reported by Ukrinform quoting the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration Serhii Lysak who wrote on Telegram: “Last night Nikopol was hit by enemy artillery. People were unharmed, but seven detached buildings were damaged”. In addition, an electric transmission line was hit. In the rest of the districts of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukrinform reports, no Russian shelling was recorded.
A huge fire broke out on Saturday at a fuel depot in Sevastopol, the main port in Moscow-annexed Crimea, with authorities saying it was the result of a drone attack.
Sevastopol is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and has been hit by a series of drone attacks since the Kremlin’s Ukraine offensive launched last year.
“A fuel reserve is on fire in the Kazachya Bay district” of the city, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram in the early hours of Saturday.
“According to preliminary information, it was caused by a drone strike.” He said the fire’s size was “around 1,000 square meters” and published images of huge clouds of smoke rising into the air.Razvozhayev called on Crimeans to “remain calm” and in a later post said, “nobody was hurt.”
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force has threatened to withdraw his troops from the key battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine as casualty rates mount while Ukraine’s military authorities say Russian forces have been unable to cut their supply routes to the front-line city.
Losses in Bakhmut are five times higher than necessary because of a lack of artillery ammunition, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview with Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov.
“Every day we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home,” Prigozhin said, adding that he has written to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu asking for ammunition as soon as possible.
“If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced – in order not to run like cowardly rats afterwards – to either withdraw or die,” he said.
