German Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of Germany’s solidarity in a telephone call on Friday.
“We will continue our military support for Ukraine in close coordination with our European and international partners,” Scholz said in a post of X after the call.
The chancellor said he had agreed with Zelensky to remain in contact “also with a view to possible paths to a just peace” to end Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
After the phone call, Zelensky thanked Scholz for Germany’s help and support, particularly with air defence weapons, in a post on his Telegram channel.
Zelensky said that Scholz also informed him of the details of his recent telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It is obvious that only the strength of arms and the strength of diplomacy can force the perpetrator of the war to make peace and that this peace can only be achieved through strength,” Zelensky wrote.
Scholz held an hour-long phone conversation with Putin in mid-November, the first conversation between the two leaders in nearly two years.
Zelensky subsequently criticized Scholz for speaking with Putin, accusing the chancellor of undermining Putin’s international isolation and opening “Pandora’s box.”
Russian defence minister in North Korea
Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov, meanwhile, reaffirmed the good relations between his country and North Korea at a meeting with his counterpart No Kwang Chol in Pyongyang.
The Russian state news agency TASS reported on Friday that Belousov had stated cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang in the military field is actively expanding.
TASS reported that Belousov recalled the recently signed treaty on a comprehensive strategic partnership. He praised the good relations between the two countries and their governments.
The comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and North Korea is aimed at reducing the risk of war in north-east Asia, he added.
The Russian Defence Ministry published a video of Belousov’s arrival at the airport in Pyongyang.
Russia and North Korea have moved closer together against the backdrop of the international sanctions imposed on both countries. In this context, military cooperation has come in for particular criticism.
Pyongyang is said not only to have supplied Moscow with artillery ammunition and missiles, but also to have sent more than 10,000 soldiers to the war zone on Russia’s border with Ukraine.
General: Ukraine energy at risk
German Major General Christian Freuding, the military chief coordinator of the German Ukraine Aid organization, sees the energy supply in Ukraine as being increasingly at risk due to targeted Russian attacks.
Freuding also made it clear that he does not expect the early winter weather in the combat zones to provide much relief for the country’s defenders.
The effects of the so-called mud season before the onset of hard frost had “not been as severe” in the Donbass region as in the past two winters, he said in a Bundeswehr video.
Further deliveries of spare parts and generators are needed, as is material support for the Ukrainian military. He mentioned equipping newly formed units, as well as air defence and anti-aircraft defence.
“The will of the Ukrainian population and the Ukrainian military to win this war remains unbroken. But of course there is exhaustion,” said Freuding.
Bodies of soldiers exchanged
The bodies of 502 Ukrainian soldiers killed in the fight against the Russian invasion were returned by Russian on Friday as part of an exchange mediated by the International Red Cross.
According to the Coordination Staff for Prisoner of War Matters, 64 of the soldiers were killed in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhya and a further 24 in the Luhansk region in the east of the country.
Another 17 of the soldiers were killed in Russia. In August, Ukrainian units advanced into the Russian border region of Kursk. They still hold an area of several hundred square kilometres.
According to Russian media reports, Russia received the bodies of 48 Russian soldiers in return.
At the beginning of November, 563 bodies of soldiers were handed over to the Ukrainian side. Due to the Russian advance, particularly in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian army is not always able to recover its dead.
Ukraine has been defending itself against a full-scale Russian invasion for over two and a half years.
Harsh sentence for Russian war opponent
A Russian military court has sentenced the already detained war opponent Alexei Gorinov to three years in prison for allegedly justifying terrorism.
The independent news portal Mediazona reported on Friday that his total prison sentence has been extended by one year to eight years due to the consolidation of the two judgements.
However, the judge in Vladimir, around 200 kilometres east of Moscow, ordered the 63-year-old to be transferred to a penal colony with strict prison conditions. The trial lasted only three days.
Gorinov has been in custody since 2022 for allegedly discrediting the Russian army and is considered to be in poor health. The then-member of a Moscow district assembly was one of the first people in Russia to be sentenced to prison without probation for allegedly discrediting the Russian army.
He had called for a minute’s silence at a meeting “for the victims of the current military aggression in Ukraine.”
The new trial was based on witness statements from fellow prisoners in which Gorinov is said to have justified Ukraine’s defensive action and the blowing up of the Crimean bridge.
After the start of the Ukraine war, the Russian parliament significantly tightened legislation as part of a crackdown on anti-war activists. Hundreds of people have been convicted for criticizing the war.
