Germany Backs Ukraine’s EU Membership As Clashes Continue (Worthy News Radio)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

KYIV/MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Moscow on Monday confirmed that North Korea’s hardline leader, Kim Jong-un, will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days for talks that are expected to focus on military cooperation as the war in Ukraine drags on, but Germany pledged more support for Kyiv. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, made clear that she wants Ukraine to join the European Union during an unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Monday morning.

The minister stressed that Ukraine could rely on Germany and its understanding of what she said was “EU enlargement as a necessary geopolitical consequence of Russia’s war.”
She said that Ukraine already has candidate status and that preparations are underway to decide on opening EU accession talks.

However, EU member state Hungary has already warned it won’t support Ukraine’s membership of the 27-nation bloc as long as the cultural, political, and language rights of the ethnic Hungarian minority there have not been restored. It also wants Kyiv to remove Hungary’s largest OTP Bank from its list of international sponsors of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The arrival of the German foreign minister came after Germany’s defense company, Rheinmetall, agreed to supply Ukraine with 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles.

That boosted Ukraine, where intelligence services claimed that the country had recaptured oil and natural gas drilling platforms near the shores of the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea.

Additionally, the governor of Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast said Ukrainian air defenses had shot down 11 Iran-made Shahed drones overnight.

GUIDED MISSILES

While no severe casualties were reported, Governor Serhiy Lysak acknowledged that some residential buildings and natural gas pipes were damaged by what he said were” attack drones, guided missiles from tactical aircraft, and artillery.”

However, Moscow’s installed head of the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk hit back by accusing Kyiv of aggression. Yan Gagin said Kyiv was moving NATO military alliance equipment and many troops to the Avdiivka area in preparations for attacks in the Donetsk direction.

As clashes continue, the death toll rises, including among foreign aid workers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed his condolences to the families of two foreign aid workers whose van was reportedly hit by a Russian anti-tank missile in Donetsk on Sunday.

He said Anthony Ignat of Canada was killed and that it was “likely” that Emma Igual of Spain had also died in the attack. He added that two other volunteers –German citizen Mawick Ruben and Swedish citizen Johan Mathias – were seriously injured and treated in Dnipro hospitals.”This Russian shelling once again confirms how close the war in Ukraine is to everyone in the world who truly values human life and who believes it is the common moral duty of humanity to stop terror and defeat evil,” Zelensky told his nation in televised remarks.

The four volunteers, who had rescued wounded people from frontline areas, were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar.

They were the latest casualties in a relentless war that broke out with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

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