“Find a job,” the Germans tell the Ukrainians there – Update on the war in Ukraine from June 24

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry blamed Washington for the Ukrainian missile attack on occupied Crimea that reportedly killed five people and injured more than 100, calling it a “terrorist attack.”

Debris from four intercepted missiles and cluster munitions from a fifth missile fired by Ukraine rained down on the beaches of the Black Sea port city of Sevastopol, AFP reported.

In initial reports, Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev claimed on social media that two children and one adult had died. (The updated figure was three children and two adults.) A Russian Health Ministry official told Russian state media that 124 people were injured, including 27 children.

“Such actions will not go unnoticed,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Razvozhayev said Ukraine fired five missiles, four of which were destroyed by surface-to-air defenses and the fifth exploded over the city. The shrapnel hit beaches north of the city and set fire to a house and a forest.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Washington and Kiev were “responsible for a deliberate missile attack on peaceful residents.” It claimed that the missiles were American-made ATACMS missiles armed with cluster warheads, adding: “All flight missions for US ATACMS are entered by US specialists based on US satellite reconnaissance data.”

Other interesting topics

Russian attack on Ukrainian Kharkiv leaves two dead

Russia has stepped up its attacks on the northeastern region of Kharkiv after launching a new offensive there last month.

The day before, Russia launched airstrikes on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Karkiv, killing two people and wounding about 50 others. It also attacked Kyiv with cruise missiles from the Sea of ​​Azov, wounding two people and destroying residential buildings. The Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down two of the three Kalibr missiles headed for the capital.

The Conservative Party in Germany demands that unemployed Ukrainian refugees go

The chairman of the Bavarian opposition party CSU in the German Bundestag has called for the deportation of unemployed Ukrainian refugees.

“More than two years after the outbreak of war, the principle should now apply: find work in Germany or return to the safe areas of western Ukraine,” said Alexander Dobrindt.

he said in an interview published on Sunday in the Berlin tabloid Bild.

“We need stronger cooperation obligations for asylum seekers in job placement. There must be a job offer and that must be part of the integration effort,” said Dobrindt.

His comments came after reports emerged that only around 33,000 Ukrainian jobseekers had applied for the Jobturbo program designed to help them find jobs, about a sixth of the number the government was targeting.

Dirk Wiese, parliamentary group leader of the ruling Social Democrats in the Bundestag, told the Bild newspaper that the CSU should be ashamed of such demands and “once and for all delete the letter ‘C’ from its name, which stands for ‘Christian’.”

“Putin continues to bomb targets throughout Ukraine. Now Dobrindt also wants to send back women and children who may have already lost their parents at the front,” he said.

On the other hand, Wiese had recently shown signs of a tougher overall stance on immigration in Germany.

As Ukrainska Pravda reported, several politicians in Germany called on Saturday for the cancellation of the citizen’s allowance, i.e. the unemployment benefit for Ukrainian refugees.

An increase in fighting in Donetsk suggests that the Russian summer offensive has begun, the think tank

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) over the weekend put forward a theory that the Russian army has intensified its attacks in the southeastern Donetsk region while reducing the pace of its invasion of the northeastern Kharkiv region. This could be an indication that Moscow is preparing to resume its offensive in Donbass this summer.

The Washington-based war analysts noted that the intensity of attacks in the Toretsk-Horlivka area has increased since last week and also saw an uptick over the weekend. Before that, Moscow’s troops had remained relatively quiet on those original front lines during the winter and spring.

According to ISW, the purpose of the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region was to hold back Ukrainian troops and equipment on the northern border in order to allow Russian forces to resume offensive operations in other parts of the front, in particular in the Donetsk region.

The analysts also noted that Russian forces are gaining momentum in the Khasiv Yar region and “could soon intensify their attacks in the area if Russian commanders consider the coming weeks an opportune time for an offensive” before the defense forces are redeployed to Donetsk.”

“Ukrainian sources have warned that Russia will launch a summer offensive that will likely focus on eastern Ukraine after already conducting offensive operations in the north to conserve Ukraine’s limited resources. The recent increase in attacks in the Donetsk region may indicate preparations for such a summer offensive, if it has not already been launched,” the ISW analysts wrote.

The Ukrainian leadership, from President Volodymyr Zelensky to Lieutenant Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, had long expressed suspicions that Moscow would resume its offensive in the south by June.

But that does not mean that the offensive in Kharkiv has completely stopped. The ISW reported that Ukrainian forces “launched a counterattack in the north and northeast of Kharkiv on Sunday, while Russian offensive operations in the region continued.”

Russian bloggers claimed that Moscow’s forces repelled Ukrainian counterattacks near Hlyboke (north of Kharkiv) and in Vovchansk. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that fighting near Vovchansk and in Vovchansk was ongoing and that Russian forces hit Lyptsi (northwest of Kharkiv region) with 23 glide bombs on Sunday.