New revelations in the German press evoke new leads which would lead to Ukraine in the investigation into the sabotage of the two Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Did Ukraine sabotage the two Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany? This is the hypothesis put forward on Friday 26 by the weekly Der Spiegel, based on new leads. The police investigations focus in particular on a sailboat, theAndromeda, likely to have been used to transport explosives used for sabotage in September 2022 in the Baltic Sea. The metadata of an email sent during the rental of the sailboat would lead to Ukraine, thus affirms Der Spiegel.
Franceinfo takes stock of this new day of conflict.
New night bombardments on kyiv
Russian forces bombed kyiv again overnight from Thursday to Friday, the city’s civil-military administration said, saying all the missiles were intercepted and destroyed. “Another air attack on kyiv, the 13th in a row since the beginning of May! And as always, at night”, said the administration on its Telegram account. According to her, cruise missiles were launched by Tu-95MS strategic bombers from the Caspian Sea region. “According to preliminary information, all enemy targets in kyiv airspace have been detected and destroyed”she added.
In its daily morning brief, the Ukrainian General Staff reported 55 Russian air attacks over the past day, including 36 by explosive drones, and four missile attacks. “An S-300 missile hit a dam in the Karlivka area of the Donetsk region” (east), said the staff. “As a result, there is a great danger of flooding of the surrounding communities”he added, specifying that he had, on the other hand, intercepted all the projectiles launched during the air raids.
One dead and 15 injured in Russian strike on clinic in Dnipro, Ukraine
At least one person was killed and fifteen others, including two children, injured in a Russian strike that hit a clinic in Dnipro, a large city in central eastern Ukraine, on Friday, authorities said. “Missile strike against a clinic in the city of Dnipro. One person was killed and fifteen others were injured”President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
He posted a video in which buildings can be seen heavily damaged and topped with plumes of black smoke. “We must defeat these inhuman beings”, launched Mr. Zelensky about the Russian army. Regional Governor Sergey Lyssak said two boys aged three and six were among the injured.
Russia: Two drones crash and damage buildings in Krasnodar, no casualties
Two drones fell on Friday in the center of Krasnodar, a major city in southwestern Russia, about 200 kilometers from Crimea, damaging buildings but no casualties, the regional governor said. “The reason for this morning’s incident on Morskaya Street (in Krasnodar) is the downing of two drones. Buildings are damaged, but no vital infrastructure. And the main thing is that there was no victims”Governor Veniamine Kondratiev said on Telegram.
Local media released video from a surveillance camera on Friday morning showing an unidentified flying object crashing in a shower of flames near parked cars. The city of Krasnodar, which has more than one million inhabitants, is one of the cities with the strongest demographic growth in Russia. It is located east of Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Nord Stream: new tracks lead to Ukraine
New leads in the investigation into the sabotage of the two Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany lead to Ukraine, the German weekly claims on Friday Der Spiegel. The police investigations focus in particular on a sailboat, the “Andromeda”, likely to have been used to transport explosives used for sabotage in September 2022 in the Baltic Sea.
The metadata of an email sent during the rental of the sailboat would lead to Ukraine, thus affirms Der Spiegel. At the beginning of the week, other German media, members of an international consortium of journalists, traced the thread of the rental of the boat, carried out by a Polish company which would in fact be owned by Ukrainians. Investigators are also exploring a lead “in Ukrainian military circles”according to the media Suddeutsche ZeitungRND and WDR.
Olaf Scholz ready “when the time comes” to reconnect with Putin
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was ready to resume contact on Friday “When the time comes” about Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has not spoken since December. Regarding conflict resolution, “Russia must understand that it cannot be about sealing some kind of cold peace, which would see the current front line become the new border between Russia and Ukraine, this would only legitimize the criminal expedition of Cheese fries”insisted Olaf Scholz.
“On the contrary, we must achieve a fair peace and the condition for doing so is a withdrawal of Russian troops” of Ukraine, after the invasion began in February 2022, he added. However, he explicitly refused to say whether this withdrawal should also include Crimea, which has been occupied since 2014. The German Chancellor judged that it was up to Ukraine to define what it wants precisely.