Ukraine war in Newsblog | Ukraine wants “army of drones”

Day 339 since the beginning of the war: France does not rule out fighter jets. The Russian armed forces could run out of Iranian drones. All information in the news blog.

6:56 p.m.: Ukraine is pushing its idea of ​​an “army of drones”. The General Staff announces that the formation of several companies for drone strikes has been approved. Each of them will receive Starlink terminals and other equipment in addition to the unmanned missiles and ammunition, according to Facebook.

Starlink is operated by Tesla boss Elon Musk’s US company SpaceX and is used in Ukraine by civilians and the military alike for satellite Internet access. Ukraine’s defense minister told Reuters last month that drones are the future of warfare.

5:59 p.m.: Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius says he does not expect the delivery of combat aircraft requested by Ukraine to take place. “I think that’s out of the question,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Fighter jets are much more complex systems than tanks and have a completely different range and firepower. “We would venture into dimensions that I would currently warn against.”

5.10 p.m.: Under the pressure of Western sanctions, Russian banks’ profits collapsed by more than 90 percent in the war year 2022. Overall, the banking sector in the largest country in the world in terms of area generated a profit of 203 billion rubles (2.7 billion euros) – around a twelfth of the record result of 2.4 trillion rubles from the previous year 2021. This is according to a report published by the Russian central bank on Friday report out. This is the lowest profit for Russian banks since 2015.

However, Moscow, which repeatedly emphasizes its resilience to Western punitive measures, still describes this result as a success: It was possible to cushion a loss of 1.5 trillion rubles in the first half of the year and turn it into a profit by the end of the year, the central bank with. And in 2023, a profit of more than one trillion rubles is expected again.

In response to the war of aggression against Ukraine ordered by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in February 2022, many Western countries – including Germany – have imposed far-reaching sanctions on Russia. In the financial sector, this includes the exclusion of Russian financial institutions from the Swift banking communications network. Many people have withdrawn their money. The automotive and aviation industries have also been hit particularly hard by the pressure of sanctions.

4:44 p.m.: Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s proposal for a special Ukraine tribunal has met with rejection in the EU. At the meeting of EU justice ministers in Stockholm on Friday, no country explicitly supported the Green politician’s initiative. The Baerbock critics fear that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and those closest to him could not be held accountable. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders referred to ongoing investigations in Ukraine, in which tens of thousands of indications of war crimes had already been collected.

Baerbock had called in The Hague in mid-January for the special tribunal to punish Russian “aggression”, i.e. the war of aggression in Ukraine. She wants to set up the court according to Ukrainian law because she fears that she will miss the necessary majorities at the United Nations for an international tribunal.

She encountered objections from the EU justice ministers as well as from the foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne stressed in Stockholm that the international community must hold “the big shots” in Russia accountable and not “ordinary people in the army.” He was alluding to President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, among others.

4:20 p.m.: Ukraine reports heavy fighting around Wuhledar in the Donetsk region. The small town is of great strategic importance for both sides. Read more here.