Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was the first member of the federal government to visit Ukraine on Tuesday since the Russian invasion.

In Kyiv, she announced the reopening of the German embassy.

The last German diplomats left Ukraine on February 25, one day after the start of the war.

The embassy should resume operations on Tuesday with a minimal staffing.

During part of her visit, Baerbock was accompanied by Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra.

Together with Baerbock he arrived in Kyiv in the morning, Hoekstra wrote on Twitter.

Reinhard Veser

Editor in Politics.

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At a joint press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Baerbock said Germany would “continue to support European, free Ukraine.

Humanitarian, financial, economic, technological, political and energy issues.” In a few days, the training of Ukrainian soldiers on the modern Panzerhaubitze 2000, which Germany and the Netherlands want to deliver to Ukraine, will also begin.

Work is being done with German companies to ensure that Ukraine can “get state-of-the-art systems to protect its cities against future attacks”.

"A rocket can land anywhere"

Before meeting Kuleba, Baerbock had visited the Kiev suburbs of Irpin and Bucha, where Russian troops committed serious war crimes before they left at the end of March.

Butscha has become a symbol "for unimaginable crimes, for torture, rape, murder," wrote Baerbock on Twitter.

According to the current status of the investigation, Russian troops have murdered more than 400 civilians in Bucha in just over a month of occupation.

The Foreign Minister was accompanied in Bucha by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktowa.

Baerbock promised Ukraine political, financial and human support from Germany in an attempt to bring the perpetrators to justice.

It is important that the international community gather evidence on "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity".

“The arbitrariness is stunned.

We cannot take the pain away from the survivors, but we can do everything we can to ensure justice: no one must believe that they can commit crimes without consequences.”

Baerbock said in the Ukrainian capital that Kyiv is a free city.

But the war is not over.

"A rocket can hit any place in this country." On Monday evening, Russia had attacked Odessa with rockets when EU Council President Charles Michel and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Schmyhal were staying there.

"This is Russia's true relationship with Europe, whatever is said in Moscow," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the incident.

One person was killed when a shopping center and a warehouse with basic necessities were shelled.

In the Donbass "a lot of movement forwards and backwards"

In an interview with the Financial Times, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba commented on Kiev's war aims.

In the first few months, it would have been a victory for Ukraine, Kuleba said, if Russian troops had retreated to their pre-February 24 attack positions.

If Ukraine is now militarily strong enough, "then a victory in this war for us is undoubtedly the liberation of our remaining territories".

Meanwhile, fierce fighting continues in the Donbass, especially in the Luhansk region.

According to the US Department of Defense on Monday evening, "a lot of movement forwards and backwards" can be observed in the region.

There are towns and villages that go from hand to hand over the course of a day, a spokesman said.

The Russian troops moved very slowly and unevenly.

The head of the region's civil administration, Serhiy Hayday, said on Tuesday that Ukrainian troops had managed to destroy a pontoon bridge belonging to Russian forces across the Siversky Donets River and expelled Russian troops from the village of Bilohorivka on the Ukrainian-controlled river bank.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that a breakthrough had been made through the Ukrainian defenses at Popasna.

According to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, around a thousand Ukrainian soldiers are still in the ruins of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, several hundred of whom are wounded.