German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius voiced skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin's unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine said a Russian drone strike killed a young girl. DW has the latest.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he was skeptical about Russian President Vladimir Putin's May 8-10 cease-fire in Ukraine.

Ukraine updates: Germany doubtful of Putin's 3-day ceasefire
Dmytro Hubenko with AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters

The defense minister said that recent experience shows that such declarations often amount to little. 

He also said he's counting on continued US support for Ukraine's defense against Russia, emphasizing that the war affects Europe's security. 

Meanwhile, Russia's overnight drone strike killed a 12-year-old girl and injured her parents in central Ukraine.

Here is a summary of developments from Russia's war in Ukraine on Tuesday, April 29.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-germany-doubtful-of-putins-3-day-ceasefire/live-72382120

The Berlin Higher Administrative Court on Monday banned Russian and Soviet flags from rallies in the city commemorating victory over Nazi Germany.

The court agreed with the police, ruling that, 

“The prognosis of the police that the symbols are suitable to convey a readiness for violence in view of the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine is correct. In any case, in the current context, they could be understood as an expression of sympathy for the warfare.”

The Soviet Red Army was responsible for the destruction of the vast majority of the Wehrmacht, making the single greatest contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany of any of the allied nations. The Soviet army suffered 95 percent of all allied military casualties. Eighty Soviet soldiers died to every one American G.I.

The West rarely acknowledges this. Even before Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian civil war in February 2022, Russia was not invited to take part in either the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy invasion in 2014 or the 75th anniversary in 2019. 

A lower court in Berlin had previously lifted the ban on the display of Russian and Soviet flags, but that ruling was overturned by the higher court on Monday, the Berliner Zeitung reported. “In the opinion of the court, it is not possible to separate the commemoration of the end of the war and the renewed war in Ukraine,” the newspaper said.

Nazi flags and other symbols are already banned in Germany. Ironically, Ukraine, which this decision is intended to protect, permits open glorification of its World War II-era Nazi collaborators, principally Stepan Bandera, and allows some of its soldiers to display Nazi symbols. 

Neo-Nazi groups played a major role in the 2014 coup that overthrew the elected president in Kiev, eventually sparking the civil war that continues until today with Russian intervention. 

Russia is on alert for possible attacks on Moscow’s Victory Day celebration by Ukrainian terrorist cells operating in Russia, especially following the failed drone attacks on the Kremlin. 

CORRECTION: 80 Soviet soldiers died to every one U.S. G.I., not 8 as previously reported. 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe     

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/08/russian-soviet-flags-banned-at-berlin-victory-day/

Russia considers President Vladimir Putin’s declared 72-hour Victory Day ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict as “the start of direct negotiations with Kiev without preconditions,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Putin said he was introducing the truce due to “humanitarian considerations,”and ordered the suspension of all military activity against Ukrainian forces starting from midnight on May 7–8 and lasting until midnight on May 10–11.

The ceasefire announcement stated that “the Russian side reiterates its willingness to enter peace talks without preconditions, with a view to eliminating the root causes behind the Ukraine crisis and establishing constructive interaction with international partners.”

Speaking to journalists following a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers on Tuesday, Lavrov also commented on Vladimir Zelensky’s demand for an immediate 30-day ceasefire.

“A [30-day] ceasefire in this situation is considered a precondition that will be used to further support the Kiev regime and strengthen its military capabilities,” Lavrov said.

https://www.rt.com/russia/616508-russia-victory-day-ceasefire-kiev/

There was a point in the last three years of the Ukraine conflict where Russia and the US have teetered on the edge of a nuclear war, acclaimed filmmaker Oliver Stone has said.

Speaking to Russian students at the ‘Knowledge.First’ event in Moscow on Tuesday, spoke out against the US role in the Ukraine conflict, as well as its coverage in Western media.

The Hollywood legend suggested that over the past three years, Moscow and Washington have relived the Cold War spike in tensions that previously culminated in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and said he hoped a corresponding wind down would follow. The US and the Soviet Union almost came to a nuclear clash at the height of the Cold War, after the USSR retaliated by placing nuclear weapons in Cuba, following Washington’s deployment of nukes in Turkey.

”I want to emphasize to you students how very close we came to World War III because of this awful leadership,” he said.

”We bring a great waste of our resources and height of this futility was a war which [former US President Joe] Biden recently dedicated to weakening Russia,” Stone said. “It is a retrograde war.”

Western media coverage of the conflict and Russia has shocked him during the past three years, the director admitted.

”Even at the height of the Cold War, we didn’t treat Russia like this,” he said. Whereas now, the media has trained people in the West to equate Russia with President Vladimir Putin, Stone added.

This is a tragic substitution of hatred for intelligence.

“The propaganda state in the West is an incredible empire. Far further and stronger than I ever imagined. You are unable to see the inside of the matrix,” he said.

Straight out of the works of George Orwell.

While the anti-war filmmaker has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, he has criticized Biden and the US “neoconservative movement” for the Ukraine conflict. Stone produced the 2016 ‘Ukraine on Fire’ documentary showing the role Washington [OBAMA] played in the 2014 Maidan coup that overthrew Kiev’s democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovich.

https://www.rt.com/news/616519-brink-wwiii-oliver-stone/

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