The annual spring decree calling up around 150,000 conscripts to the Russian military signed by President Vladimir Putin was published in Moscow on Sunday in line with longstanding practice.
The conscripts are called up every year on April 1 to serve for 12 months. A similar call-up occurs in the autumn. The Defence Ministry earlier issued the assurance that they would not be sent to the front in Ukraine.
According to the decree, 150,000 conscripts aged between 18 and 30 are to be called up by July 15.
The Defence Ministry simultaneously published the document releasing from service those who have completed their basic training. These trained troops can volunteer for service on the Ukrainian front, and are seen as coming under pressure to sign the relevant contract.
Russian forces have incurred large losses since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Germans are being too fearful in their dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, former president Joachim Gauck has said in remarks published by the RND news agency on Saturday.
“Putin knows that many Germans are quicker to feel afraid than for example the Poles or French, and he is exploiting this tendency,” Gauck, who served as president between 2012 and 2017, said. “Fear is an aide to the aggressor.”
Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor in communist East Germany who played a key role as a rights activist in the run-up to German reunification in 1990, said fear made people unable to see possible solutions to problems.
He argued that Chancellor Olaf Scholz should reconsider his refusal to supply Ukraine with Germany’s long-range Taurus cruise missiles and rejected the view that this would draw Germany into the war in Ukraine.
He noted that experts in international law, military experts and many members of the ruling coalition did not share Scholz’s view on the issue. Kiev has appealed for Berlin to send the missiles, which are reported to have a range of 500 kilometres.
The issue has been the subject of intense debate, with Scholz expressing fears that targets deep inside Russia could be hit if Berlin surrendered control over targeting to Kiev. Moscow would theoretically be in range from northern Ukraine, as would the Crimean Bridge linking the peninsula to Russia.
Gauck enjoys considerable status as a voice of moral authority in Germany after serving as the government commissioner looking into the records of the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious Ministry of State Security.
Vladimir Putin recently approved a list of development plans for the Kaliningrad region of Russia, and it surprisingly listed creating a Steam-like ecosystem, including a handheld device, among the key goals. Part of a new nine-point plan handed down from Putin to PM Mikhail Mishustin, the new Russian gaming platform should include desktop and portable hardware, an OS, and a cloud system for gaming. The plans, spotted by PCGamer, indicate that PM Mishustin has a “period of execution” until June 15 to assess and organize the production of the gaming machines and ecosystem.
Kaliningrad 9-point plans
From a machine translation of the official instructions, we know that this nine-point plan was precipitated by a meeting in January concerning economic development in Kaliningrad. Third on the list is the diktat regarding developing a whole new gaming ecosystem.
“Consider the issue of organizing the production of stationary and portable game consoles and game consoles, as well as the creation of an operating system and a cloud system for delivering games and programs to users,” says the Putin-approved instruction.
We see that PM Mishustin needs only to consider and create outline plans for the gaming ecosystem before the period of execution, which is set for June 15, 2024. Of course, preparing meaningful plans is still a big task, but it should be achievable enough for Mishustin to feel relatively safe standing on balconies.
Local media has already been pondering the feasibility of Russia creating a viable gaming ecosystem from scratch. Industry figures in Russia reportedly agreed that a meaningful timescale would be five to 10 years. However, given the experience deficit and time constraints, the platform might be as much as 15 years behind platforms like Steam, technologically speaking, by the time it launches.
Other reports examine why the Kaliningrad region might have been chosen for this games industry project. Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, with access to the Baltic Sea, and operating as a special economic zone (with tax and customs duty breaks, etc). The region is also home to a recently opened silicon production facility estimated to produce 200 million silicon wafers annually.
It would be better for Russian gamers if the Ukraine war ended, and sanctions followed suit, so AMD, Intel, and Nvidia hardware could be put back on the menu. If not, a ‘Russian Steam Machine’ might have to run on Baikal processing power or adopt some limp Chinese chips, for example. Russia probably has less work to do on the software side, as it already has Astra Linux for the OS, which could be made more PC gaming-friendly using Proton, following the Valve / Steam playbook.
Zelenskyy tells CBS News that Ukraine will lose without U.S. aid – CBS News
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CBS News he needs more weapons and funding from the U.S. to keep fighting Russia. Senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata has the exclusive interview.
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Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder says he can still imagine that his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin could contribute to ending the war in Ukraine.
“We have worked together sensibly for many years. Perhaps that can still help to find a negotiated solution, I don’t see any other way,” Schröder said in an interview with dpa.
Schröder has been friends with Putin since his time as chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and continues to work for the majority Russian companies operating the Nord Stream pipelines through the Baltic Sea. Although he has described the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “fatal mistake,” he has not renounced Putin.
The leadership of his Social Democratic Party has marginalized him for this reason, but an expulsion procedure against him failed.
When asked why he is maintaining his friendship with the Russian president despite tens of thousands of deaths and Russian war crimes in the Ukraine war, Schröder replied, “It’s true that this is a dimension that is different.”
It had once looked as if his personal relationship with Putin could be helpful in solving an extremely difficult political problem. “And that’s why I think it would be completely wrong to forget all the positive things that have happened between us in politics in the past. That’s not my style and I don’t do that either,” he said.
Schröder was alluding to his mediation mission in March 2022 shortly after the Russian attack on Ukraine, when Schröder said he first met then Ukrainian parliamentarian and current Defence Minister Rustem Umerov in Istanbul and travelled on to Moscow for talks with Putin. However, the initiative failed.
The Kremlin welcomed Schröder’s statements.
Good, constructive relations on a personal level like those between Schröder and Putin could help to solve problems, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Thursday.
The Kremlin spokesman added that when it came to those in power in Germany today, he did not see any willingness to end the war in Ukraine.
Schröder also indicated that he is in favour of a new attempt at mediation in the Ukraine-Russia conflict at the government level.
“France and Germany would have to take the initiative. It is obvious that the war cannot end with the total defeat of one side or the other,” the former chancellor said.
Schröder described speculation that Putin could start a nuclear war or attack a NATO country on the eastern flank as “nonsense.”
In order to nip an escalation towards such scenarios in the bud and prevent the population from becoming more worried, serious thought must be given to a solution to the conflict in addition to support for Ukraine, he emphasized.
Germany’s current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has not spoken to Putin on the phone since December 2022.
In an interview with the German daily Märkische Allgemeine published on Thursday, Scholz pointed out that there had been repeated discussions with Moscow about, for example, the agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain, security at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and the exchange of prisoners.
“A number of countries, including Ukraine, are currently discussing at the security advisor level what something could look like that would lead to a peace process,” he said. “But let me make one thing very clear: peace is possible at any time.”
“Putin just has to stop his barbaric campaign and withdraw troops,” Scholz asserted.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy warns of risks to U.S. if Putin not stopped – CBS News
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In an exclusive interview with CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns that if America doesn’t help his country turn back Russia’s invasion, Vladimir Putin will bring war to Europe, drawing in U.S. forces.
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Eastern Ukraine — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met our CBS News team at an undisclosed, bombed-out building in the far east of his country. Bombed-out buildings aren’t hard to come by here.
With spring approaching, Zelenskyy said Ukraine‘s forces had managed to hold off Russian advances through the worst of the winter months.
“We have stabilized the situation. It is better than it used to be two or three months ago when we had a big deficit of artillery ammunition, different kinds of weapons,” he said, “We totally didn’t see the big, huge counteroffensive from Russia… They didn’t have success.”
“We need help now”: Zelenskyy says Russian offensive looming
But Zelenskyy acknowledged that the invading Russian troops and their seemingly endless supply of missiles and shells had destroyed “some villages.”
“We didn’t have rounds, artillery rounds, a lot of different things,” he said, stressing that while his troops have managed to keep the Russians largely at bay up to now, they’re not prepared to defend against another major Russian offensive expected in the coming months.
That, he said, was expected around the end of May or in June he said.
“And before that, we not only need to prepare, we not only need to stabilize the situation, because the partners are sometimes really happy that we have stabilized the situation,” Zelenskyy said of the U.S. and Ukraine’s other backers. “No, I say we need help now.”
Ukraine vows to keep fighting Russia amid stalled U.S. aid effort
03:37
In what has become a grinding artillery war of attrition, Russia not only has the upper hand with more firepower, but also firepower with a longer reach.
“In Bakhmut and Avdivka and Lysychansk and Soledar and so on, it was really hard to fight the adversary, whose artillery shell can fire 20-plus kilometers, and [our] artillery shell is 20-minus,” he said.
With heavily armed soldiers keeping watch on the horizon, we joined Zelenskyy as he inspected freshly dug underground bunkers in Ukraine’s northeast, on the outskirts of the city of Sumy, no more than 15 miles from the Russian border.
The entire area is on a war footing in response to a significant buildup of Russian troops just across that border, and attacks on nearby villages, Zelenskyy told us.
“Usually, when they attack by artillery and destroy the villages, after that, they always tried to occupy,” he said. “We don’t know what will be tomorrow. That’s why we have to prepare.”
Zelenskyy on the stalled U.S. aid, and why Ukraine needs it
He said what’s needed most are American Patriot missile defense systems, and more artillery. While he’s grateful for the billions of dollars in U.S. support his country has already received, he said the nature of the funding dedicated by the American government to help Ukraine must be put into perspective.
“Dozens of billions remain in the U.S.,” he said. “Let’s be honest, the money which is allocated by the Congress, by the administration, in the majority of cases, 80% of this money — well, at least more than 75% — stays in the U.S. This ammunition is coming to us, but the production is taking place there, and the money stays in the U.S., and the taxes are staying in the U.S.”
“Yes, it’s a huge support coming to us, but we need [it],” added the president.
With lawmakers in the U.S. still wrangling after months of partisan gridlock over a $60 billion aid package, Zelenskyy acknowledged that the war in Gaza had refocused global attention — and U.S. aid — away from his country’s struggle.
As Ukraine aid languishes, some House members work on end run to approve funds
01:40
“First and foremost, we understand that this is a humanitarian disaster,” he said. “Of course, it took the attention from Ukraine in the information field. It’s a fact, and when you lose the attention from your region to other regions, then it’s obvious that you don’t see the view focused and it’s good for Russia.”
And the shift in the world’s attention is not all that President Vladimir Putin has sought to exploit, Zelenskyy said. It came as no surprise to him when the Russian leader pointed a finger at Ukraine, claiming it had somehow supported the terrorist attack near Moscow that killed 139 people on March 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the carnage, and U.S. officials say they’ve seen nothing to cast doubt on that claim.
“Even after ISIS took responsibility!” marvelled Zelenskyy, dismissing Putin’s insinuations as “ridiculous.”
“He doesn’t care whether it’s a terrorist act, an economic act, the oil industry or any of these spheres,” Zelenskyy said the Russian leader, accusing him of “using that to unite his society as much as possible — even what has taken place in Moscow, with so many casualties and wounded people, he’s using all of that just for the one objective to justify that Ukraine does not exist.”
We asked whether the war could be won with Putin still in power. Zelenskyy accepted that it would be a huge challenge, but said that village by village, winning the war would weaken Putin at home, and he warned that if Ukraine does lose, Putin won’t stop there.
Russia’s war “can come to Europe, and to the United States”
“For him, we are a satellite of Russian Federation. At the moment, it’s us, then Kazakhstan, then Baltic states, then Poland, then Germany. At least half of Germany,” he said, reiterating a warning over what he sees as Putin’s intentions that he first issued to CBS News several years ago, before Russia’s full-scale invasion even began. At that stage, Ukraine had already been fighting Russian and Russian-backed forces for years, after they pushed into the east of the country and unilaterally annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
Ukraine president warns of possible Russian attacks on U.S.
02:22
Zelenskyy said Putin was determined to restore the former Soviet Union to its imperial glory — and its geographical borders.
“Even tomorrow, the missiles can fly to any state,” the Ukrainian leader told CBS News on Wednesday. “This aggression, and Putin’s army, can come to Europe, and then the citizens of the United States, the soldiers of the United States, will have to protect Europe because they’re the NATO members.”
Calling Russia’s invasion of his country a war “against the democracy, against the values, against the whole world,” Zelenskyy said there may be some in the West who were tired of hearing the message, “but only those are tired who are not at war, who don’t know what war is, and who have never lost his or her children.”
“The USA is helping Ukraine and we are grateful for their support, for this multilateral support, but the United States don’t have the war going on,” he said. “But it can come to Europe, and to the United States of America. It can come very quickly to Europe.”
“The 80s and then the end of the 90s – he will never forgive that,” Zelenskyy said, suggesting his Russian counterpart bears a lingering grudge over the collapse of the pre-Cold War world. “He believes in that. We don’t need to change his opinion. We need to change him. We need to replace him.”
Charlie D’Agata
Charlie D’Agata his a CBS News foreign correspondent based in the London bureau.
Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder says he can still imagine that his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin could contribute to ending the war in Ukraine.
“We have worked together sensibly for many years. Perhaps that can still help to find a negotiated solution, I don’t see any other way,” Schröder said in an interview with dpa.
Schröder has been friends with Putin since his time as chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and continues to work for the majority Russian companies of the Nord Stream pipelines through the Baltic Sea. Although he has described the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “fatal mistake,” he has not renounced Putin.
The leadership of his Social Democratic Party has marginalized him for this reason, but an expulsion procedure against him failed.
When asked why he is maintaining his friendship with the Russian president despite tens of thousands of deaths and Russian war crimes in the Ukraine war, Schröder replied, “It’s true that this is a dimension that is different.”
It had once looked as if this personal relationship could be helpful in solving an extremely difficult political problem. “And that’s why I think it would be completely wrong to forget all the positive things that have happened between us in politics in the past. That’s not my style and I don’t do that either,” he said.
Schröder was alluding to his mediation mission in March 2022 shortly after the Russian attack on Ukraine, when Schröder said he first met the then Ukrainian parliamentarian and current defence minister Rustem Umerov in Istanbul and travelled on to Moscow for talks with Putin. However, the initiative failed.
Today, Schröder is in favour of a new attempt at mediation at the government level.
“France and Germany would have to take the initiative. It is obvious that the war cannot end with the total defeat of one side or the other.”
Schröder described speculation that Putin could start a nuclear war or attack a NATO country on the eastern flank as “nonsense.”
In order to nip an escalation towards such scenarios in the bud and prevent the population from becoming more worried, serious thought must be given to a solution to the conflict in addition to support for Ukraine, he emphasized.
Russia has no designs on any NATO country and will not attack Poland, the Baltic states or the Czech Republic but if the West supplies F-16 fighters to Ukraine then they will be shot down by Russian forces, President Vladimir Putin said late Wednesday.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Speaking to Russian air force pilots, Putin said the U.S.-led military alliance had expanded eastwards towards Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union but that Moscow had no plans to attack a NATO state.
“We have no aggressive intentions towards these states,” Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript released on Thursday.
“The idea that we will attack some other country — Poland, the Baltic States, and the Czechs are also being scared — is complete nonsense. It’s just drivel.”
The Kremlin, which accuses the U.S. of fighting against Russia by supporting Ukraine with money, weapons and intelligence, says relations with Washington have probably never been worse.
Asked about F-16 fighters which the West has promised to send to Ukraine, Putin said such aircraft would not change the situation in Ukraine.
“If they supply F-16s, and they are talking about this and are apparently training pilots, this will not change the situation on the battlefield,” Putin said.
“And we will destroy the aircraft just as we destroy today tanks, armoured vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launchers.”
Putin said that F-16 could also carry nuclear weapons.
“Of course, if they will be used from airfields in third countries, they become for us legitimate targets, wherever they might be located,” Putin said.
Putin’s remarks followed comments earlier in the day by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that the aircraft should arrive in Ukraine in the coming months.
Ukraine, now more than two years into a full-fledged war against Russia, has sought F-16s for many months.
Belgium, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands are among countries which have pledged to donate F-16s. A coalition of countries has promised to help train Ukrainian pilots in their use.
Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder says he can still imagine that his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin could contribute to ending the war in Ukraine.
“We have worked together sensibly for many years. Perhaps that can still help to find a negotiated solution, I don’t see any other way,” Schröder said in an interview with dpa.
Schröder has been friends with Putin since his time as chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and continues to work for the majority Russian companies of the Nord Stream pipelines through the Baltic Sea. Although he has described the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “fatal mistake,” he has not renounced Putin.
The leadership of his Social Democratic Party has marginalized him for this reason, but an expulsion procedure against him failed.
When asked why he is maintaining his friendship with the Russian president despite tens of thousands of deaths and Russian war crimes in the Ukraine war, Schröder replied, “It’s true that this is a dimension that is different.”
It had once looked as if this personal relationship could be helpful in solving an extremely difficult political problem. “And that’s why I think it would be completely wrong to forget all the positive things that have happened between us in politics in the past. That’s not my style and I don’t do that either,” he said.
Schröder was alluding to his mediation mission in March 2022 shortly after the Russian attack on Ukraine, when Schröder said he first met the then Ukrainian parliamentarian and current defence minister Rustem Umerov in Istanbul and travelled on to Moscow for talks with Putin. However, the initiative failed.
