Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? Do not panic, 20 minutes takes stock for you every evening at 7:30 p.m. Who did what ? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below.
The fact of the day
It is not good to sail in these times in the Black Sea. On Friday morning, the Russian Navy conducted a military “exercise” in the northwest of the Black Sea, indicating that anti-ship missiles had been fired to shoot down a target at sea. “Several areas in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily unsafe for passage,” Moscow added.
“Telemetry data and video surveillance from unmanned aerial vehicles confirmed the success of the combat exercise. The target boat was destroyed as a result of the missile strike,” Moscow added.
At the same time, on the night of Thursday to Friday, Russian artillery again pounded the Odessa region for the fourth consecutive night, local governor Oleg Kiper said. “Grain silos of an agricultural business in the region were affected. The enemy destroyed 100 tons of cultivated peas and 20 tons of barley,” he said on Telegram, adding that two people were injured.
sentence of the day
The colossal resources that have been “pushed” into the Kiev regime are not helping, and neither are the deliveries of Western weapons, tanks, artillery and missiles. »
Vladimir Putin estimated this Friday, during a meeting of the Security Council broadcast on television, that despite Western arms deliveries, Kiev is not obtaining “no results, at least for the moment” in its recent counter-offensive initiative. “The whole world sees that the much-vaunted, supposedly invulnerable Western equipment is burning, and tactically and technically even inferior to some Soviet-produced weaponry,” the Russian president said.
Vladimir Putin also considered that the Russian forces were fighting in a “professional” and “heroic way”, assuring that the Ukrainian troops had suffered “enormous losses” and that “their capacity for mobilization” was running out.
The number of the day
8.5%. This Friday, the Central Bank of Russia (BCR) announced an increase in its key rate by one point to 8.5%. A first since February 2022, the date of the start of the Ukrainian invasion. This announcement comes in a context of weakening of the ruble which raises fears of an acceleration of inflation in the country. “Domestic demand trends and the depreciation of the ruble since the start of 2023 significantly amplify the inflationary risk,” the BCR said in a statement. Despite this, the central bank maintains its objective of bringing inflation down to 4% in 2024, while it should reach, according to its forecasts, between 5% and 6.5% at the end of 2023.
The trend of the day
According to reports from the White House, the Ukrainian army has started using the controversial cluster munitions supplied by the United States, as Ukraine tries to give new impetus to its counter-offensive against Russian forces. According to a White House spokesman, John Kirby, the deployment of cluster munitions to the frontline took place “roughly within the last week”. The spokesperson insisted that the Ukrainian forces “use them appropriately. They use them effectively and they really have an impact on Russian defensive formations and defensive maneuvers,” the spokesperson told reporters.
Cluster munitions can disperse up to several hundred small explosive charges, capable of remaining unexploded in the ground and creating a risk for civilians after a conflict has ended.
They are banned by many countries, notably European, signatories of a convention signed in Oslo in 2008 and to which neither Russia, nor the United States, nor Ukraine are parties. “In Russia, there is a good supply of cluster munitions,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the public television channel “Rossia-1”, broadcast on Sunday, threatening to use them on the front if Kiev used this type of weapon. Ukrainian soldiers have already accused Moscow of using this controversial ammunition since the beginning of the conflict.