Russian drones have been circling over the village throughout the day. “We could hear the buzzing overhead, it’s a horrible sound because you know what’s going to follow.”

In the afternoon, the Russian artillery shells hit quite indiscriminately, but then they worked their way forward, says Thomas. “Around 6.30 p.m. an artillery shell hit the house where our post was.” Björn C. was seriously injured by shrapnel. With other comrades he wanted to drive him to a field hospital. “It was too late, almost two hours later he was already dead.”

Björn C. was very popular within the unit. “He was always kind to everyone, one of the best people I knew. He was big and strong, that’s why we called him Panzer,” said the BamS comrade.

Björn C. apparently wanted to go back to his native Brandenburg. “He had submitted his application that evening, the next day he would have had a few days off,” the comrade told the newspaper. “He then wanted to go home for good within the next two months, he missed his girlfriend, his child and his dog.”

Ukraine reported the death of a German volunteer fighter in the battle against the Russian attack for the first time on Saturday. The International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine in Kyiv announced that three volunteers from France, Australia and the Netherlands were among the “fallen brothers in arms”. The names of the four men were also included in the statement, but not the time or place of their deaths.

From the Foreign Office in Berlin it was heard that the embassy in Kyiv was trying to clarify and was “in contact with the Ukrainian authorities who have spread the relevant news”.

The embargo on Russian oil is a maze we can probably emerge from with exceptions wanted by some unwilling countries(…). But the real problem is the sanctions applied against Russia. Would it be possible to calculate the damage done to the economies of the countries that were part of the European Union at the time Putin invaded Ukraine? We could probably do this with patience. But we could only compensate the victims if they all belonged to a multinational company with the same laws and the same executive branch pursuing common goals. Unfortunately that’s not the case. This ideal society was the great European hope after the many wars in the past. (…) Most recently, after February 24, sanctions were used to hit Russia’s economic base and deprive the country of technologies and markets. These technologies and markets are part of our economic system. These are likely effective measures, but at the same time they harm companies and individual operators from countries that have important trade exchanges with Russia.