In Irpin, faced with the numerous ruins of residential buildings, Schallenberg emphasized that these pictures would “get under your skin”. As an Austrian, you have to realize that all this happened “in the immediate vicinity”, a few hours by train from Vienna.
“It also shows something, as we saw earlier at the airport, how massively the Russian Federation, especially Vladimir Putin, has miscalculated.” The Russian troops actually thought that “they will be received with bread and salt and that they will not be shot at”. This shows how heroically Ukraine defended itself, but also that there is never anything nice about war. “War is horrific, war is death, war is destruction,” said the Foreign Minister.
Irpin Mayor Oleksandar Markushin told foreign ministers that 95 percent of the residents of Irpin, a city of about 100,000 people, had fled the community during the fighting. In the meantime, 75 percent of the residents have returned. “If we hadn’t won the battle of Irpin, there would have been fighting in Kyiv,” Markushin said. He asked Schallenberg to help with the reconstruction, because more than 100 buildings in the city, including schools and kindergartens, as well as numerous residential buildings had been completely destroyed. Schallenberg promised to help “to give people perspective again where possible”.
In Hostomel, the international cargo and factory airport was taken by Russian landing troops on the first day of the aggressive war, and a few hours later the Ukrainians recaptured it. The fighting that saw the airport returned to Russian hands destroyed much of the infrastructure, as well as the only airworthy example of the Antonov An-225 – the world’s longest aircraft and the pride of Ukrainian aviation. Many destroyed warehouses can be seen during the on-site inspection, and a commander explained the course of the fighting to the foreign ministers.
In the afternoon, the two foreign ministers will meet Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and their counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv. This will be followed by a press conference with Kuleba. The trip to Ukraine was actually planned in the so-called Slavkov format (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia), but the Slovakian Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok had to cancel at short notice due to a corona disease.
Source: Nachrichten
