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FILE PHOTO - Finance Minister Christian Lindner is pictured during a news conference on further aid to companies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Berlin, Germany, April 8, 2022. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner - 

Germany must do everything in its power to help Ukraine win the war against Russia but without endangering its own security and NATO's defence capability, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Saturday (Apr 23).

"We must do everything in our power to help Ukraine win, but the limit of the ethical responsibility is endangering our own security and endangering the defence capability of NATO territory," Lindner said in a party conference speech in Berlin.

"But what is possible ... must be undertaken pragmatically and quickly, together with our European partners," he said.

Lindner said he was in favour of supporting Ukraine with heavy weapons, but that Germany must not become a party to the war.

"Ukraine needs military support, and in order to be victorious, it also needs heavy weapons," Lindner added.

He rejected criticism aimed at Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the government's apparent reluctance to deliver heavy battlefield weapons, such as tanks and howitzers.

"Olaf Scholz is a responsible leader who weighs things up carefully and makes decisions on this basis," Lindner said.

A day earlier, when asked about Germany's failure to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, Scholz said NATO must avoid a direct military confrontation with Russia that could lead to a third world war//CNA

Three rockets struck within a few seconds on Friday, just after 4pm. (Photo: AFP/SERGEY BOBOK) - 

"Close the window, smoke is getting in," a policeman yells. Vyacheslav Pavlov and his elderly mother live on the ninth floor in Ukraine's second city Kharkiv and the next-door flat is ablaze after a Russian rocket attack.

The city has not come under massive bombardment but is the target of random strikes at any hour, day or night, and they can be deadly.

The eastern and north-eastern districts are hit the most and that's where 86-year-old Tamara Pavlovna and her son live on Working Hero Street.

About 20 apartment towers rise up along the road, each 11 storeys high, surrounded by gardens dotted with swings and slides for children.

Three rockets struck within a few seconds on Friday, just after 4pm. 

One destroyed a sex shop on the other side of the street.

A second hit a residential tower and the third left a hole in the ground next to the pavement.

No one was hurt.

"SAVED BY THE DOOR"

Police told the old woman she had to leave her home, with barely time to stuff a few items into a small backpack.

The lift is broken and Pavlovna goes down the stairs wearing a white head scarf.

Outside, she sits waiting on a bench, a little lost and stressed.

"My son has been looking after me for eight years," she says. "He does not want to leave and I cannot take the decision alone.

"For a month and a half, the Russians have been bombing here in this district, non-stop."

At the start of the invasion in late February, Moscow tried to seize control of Kharkiv, in vain. Ukrainian forces repelled the assault several kilometres from the town after bitter fighting.

Ukraine has since retaken several small areas to the southeast, but Kharkiv remains within the reach of Russian artillery.

On Working Hero Street, firefighters have trained water hoses on the blazing apartment and clouds of black smoke climb skywards.

Next door, Pavlov has duly closed the balcony window and is smoking a cigarette on the landing.

"When the second strike hit the neighbouring apartment, the door saved us by blocking the flying glass," he explains.

"TERRIFYING NIGHT"

Further east on Peace Street, a rocket smashed into a hotel-restaurant the previous evening.

Surveillance cameras from a leather shop across the road timed the strike at 10.02pm.

In the black and white video images, a white fog appears suddenly and pieces of wood fly as if in a hurricane. The headlights on two nearby cars start to flash.

Most of the restaurant has been destroyed.

In the leather shop, Ivan is knocking nails into planks of wood to seal up the blown-out windows.

"Every pane of glass has been broken, everything is damaged, the door has been ripped off.

"We'll try and patch it up today to protect the shop. Shell splinters have torn away the metal like paper. The whole ceiling came down."

"This is the 'Russian world', he says, refusing to give his full name.

In the car park behind the shop, two representatives of a protestant church arrive carrying bags of supplies for a family. Their seven-year-old child is asked by the churchmen to pray every day.

"My child went to bed at 8pm," says Yelena, whose apartment is right behind the hotel restaurant.

"At 10 it all started, everything shook," she recalls.

"There were two strikes, later there were more, we were no longer able to sleep and spent all night in the corridor.

"It was a terrifying night," she says, black bags under tear-reddened eyes//CNA

The 2022 Asian Games in China will go ahead, the Olympic Council of Malaysia said Saturday, denying claims that it was facing the possibility of being postponed (Photo: AFP/Hector RETAMAL) - 

The 2022 Asian Games in China will go ahead, the Olympic Council of Malaysia said Saturday (Apr 23), denying claims that it was facing the possibility of being postponed.

The Olympic-sized event is scheduled to be held in September in Hangzhou, a major metropolitan area less than 200km southwest of Shanghai.

Shanghai is currently grappling with a major coronavirus emergency, with its roughly 25 million residents currently in a weeks-long lockdown as authorities try to curb an Omicron-fuelled wave.

An official working with governing body the Olympic Council of Asia, who did not want to be named, had told AFP Thursday that no decision had been made but there was a possibility of postponement.

However, Olympic Council of Malaysia president Norza Zakaria disputed that.

"The Asian Games 2022 in China is going ahead," he told AFP Saturday. "We have checked with OCA (the Olympic Council of Asia) and the organising committee."

Most international sports events have been on hold in China since the COVID-19 pandemic, although Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics in a strict bio-bubble in February.

Right after the Olympics ended, Shanghai - China's biggest city - witnessed the country's worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years, and its residents have largely been confined to their homes since early April.

All 56 competition venues for the Games in Hangzhou have already been completed, Chinese organisers said this month, promising to publish a virus control plan that takes its cue from the Winter Olympics.

Hangzhou is scheduled to hold the Games from Sep 10 to 25, becoming the third Chinese host after Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010//CNA

FILE PHOTO - Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi speaks at a news conference in Warsaw, Poland April 4, 2022. Dawid Zuchowic/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS - 

Japan's foreign minister promised his country would bolster its military to help the United States maintain regional security during a visit on Saturday (Apr 23) to a US aircraft carrier patrolling Asian waters.

"Today I was able to experience first-hand the frontline of national security," Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in the hangar deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln sailing in waters south of Tokyo. Japan will "significantly strengthen" its defence capabilities and work closely with the United States, he added.

Hayashi spoke amid concern in Japan that Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which it sees as an affront to international diplomatic norms, could encourage neighbouring China to use military muscle to win control of Taiwan and threaten nearby Japanese islands.

Japan has also expressed concern about Beijing's deepening security ties with Moscow, which have included joint drills in waters surrounding Japan.

China has said its intentions in Asia are peaceful.

Hayashi flew out to the aircraft carrier from Tokyo with US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, who warned that the invasion of Ukraine, which Russia describes as a "special operation", posed security risks in regions far beyond Europe, including in the Indo Pacific.

The two watched carrier flight operations from the deck of the Lincoln, which had just sailed from the Sea of Japan close to the Korean peninsula where it had conducted naval exercises with Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force following the latest missile launch by North Korea//CNA