Germany’s president yesterday arrived in Kyiv for his first visit to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion, a trip that came amid Moscow’s unsubstantiated warnings of a “dirty bomb” attack as the conflict entered its ninth month.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after arriving that “it was important to me in this phase of air attacks with drones, cruise missiles and rockets to send a signal of solidarity to Ukrainians,” German news agency DPA reported.
Steinmeier’s spokesperson, Cerstin Gammelin, posted a picture of him in Kyiv.
Photo: AFP
“Our solidarity is unbroken, and it will remain so,” she wrote on Twitter.
The German president, whose position is largely ceremonial, made it to Ukraine on his third try.
In April, he was planning to visit the nation with his Polish and Baltic counterparts, but said his presence “apparently wasn’t wanted in Kyiv.”
Steinmeier has been criticized in Ukraine for allegedly cozying up to Russia during his time as German minister for foreign affairs.
Last week, a planned trip was put off because of security concerns.
Steinmeier’s visit came as Ukrainians were bracing for less electric power this winter following a sustained Russian barrage on their infrastructure. Residents of the southern city of Mykolaiv lined up for water and essential supplies yesterday as Ukrainian forces advanced on the nearby Russian-occupied city of Kherson.
Ukrainian authorities tried to dampen public fears over Russia’s use of Iranian drones to strike the nation’s infrastructure, claiming increasing success on Monday in shooting them down.
Ukraine’s forces have shot down more than two-thirds of the approximately 330 Shahed drones that Russia had fired through Saturday, the head of Ukraine’s intelligence service, Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Kyrylo Budanov said on Monday.
Budanov said Russia’s military had ordered about 1,700 drones of different types and is rolling out a second batch of about 300 Shaheds.
Although Russia and Iran deny that the Iranian-built drones have been used, the distinctive triangle-shaped Shahed-136s have rained down on civilians in Kyiv and elsewhere.
The British Ministry of Defence said Russia was likely to use a large number of drones to try to penetrate the “increasingly effective Ukrainian air defenses” — to substitute for Russian-made long-range precision weapons “which are becoming increasingly scarce.”
That assessment came on top of a stark warning by Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu to his British, French, Turkish and US counterparts over the weekend that Ukrainian forces were preparing a “provocation” involving a radioactive device — a so-called dirty bomb.
Britain, France and the US rejected that claim as “transparently false.”
A dirty bomb uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror. Such weapons do not have the devastating destruction of a nuclear explosion, but could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.
Russian authorities on Monday doubled down on Shoigu’s warning.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian military’s radiation, chemical and biological protection forces, said Russian military assets were on high readiness for possible radioactive contamination. He told reporters a dirty bomb blast could contaminate thousands of square kilometers.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said that “it’s not an unfounded suspicion, we have serious reasons to believe that such things could be planned.”
Ukraine has rejected Moscow’s claims as an attempt to distract attention from its own plans to detonate a dirty bomb.
German Minister of Defense Christine Lambrecht on Monday dismissed as “outrageous” the Russian claim that Ukraine could use a dirty bomb.
The White House on Monday again underscored that the Russian allegations were false.
“It’s just not true. We know it’s not true,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “In the past, the Russians have, on occasion, blamed others for things that they were planning to do.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Moscow itself was setting the stage for deploying a radioactive device on Ukrainian soil. He also urged citizens to conserve their use of electricity, as an estimated 30 percent of the nation’s power plants had been destroyed or badly damaged.
“Now is definitely not the time for bright storefronts and signs,” he said.
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