Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 minutes takes stock for you every evening. Between the strong declarations, the progress on the front and the results of the battles, here is the main part of the day.
The fact of the day
Russia claimed this Wednesday the capture of Klichtchiïvka, in eastern Ukraine, one of the rare localities that the Ukrainian army had reconquered during its offensive in the summer of 2023, which ultimately failed. The Ukrainian forces have been on the defensive since this failure and lack soldiers and weapons, a situation accentuated by the multiple delays in military aid promised by the West, including the Americans.
Opposite, Russian troops have regained the initiative and are making a slow push on the eastern front, where they have achieved tactical successes and captured a series of localities, notably the fortress town of Avdiïvka, in FEBRUARY. This advance, at the cost of heavy losses, has however not allowed them, for the moment, to achieve a real breakthrough.
It is in this dynamic that Russia announced on Wednesday that it had conquered Klichtchiïvka, in ruins, located in the Donetsk region, about 5 km south of Bakhmout, a town which fell into the hands of the Russians a year ago at the end of ‘a long battle. kyiv announced the reconquest of this village in September.
On May 15, Moscow also claimed to have recaptured Robotyné in the south, a symbolic locality because it had also been one of the few to have been kidnapped during the Ukrainian offensive.
Today’s statement
“ “Russia has launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that we believe is a space weapon capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit” »
Through the voice of Pentagon spokesperson General Pat Ryder, the United States accused Moscow this Thursday of having launched a space weapon and having deployed it in the same orbit as an American government satellite. “Washington, which stands ready to protect its interests, will continue to monitor the situation,” added Pat Ryder. “We have a responsibility to be prepared to protect and defend the domain, the space domain,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to respond directly to the accusations. “I cannot comment on this. We act in full compliance with international law, we violate nothing and we have repeatedly advocated for the banning of all weapons in space,” he said during a press briefing in Moscow.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia accused the United States of seeking to place weapons in space after Washington vetoed a Russian motion on non-proliferation at the United Nations.
The number of the day
Six. This is the number of Ukrainian children previously detained in Ukraine that the Russian authorities returned to their loved ones this Wednesday. The six boys aged 6 to 17, including two brothers, were returned to their families on the grounds of the Qatari Embassy in Moscow in the presence of Kremlin Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, who is being prosecuted, just like Russian President Vladimir Putin, for deportation of children by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Ukraine is demanding the return of nearly 20,000 minors “deported or forcibly displaced” in Russia since the start of its assault on February 24, 2022. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant more than a year ago against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for deportation of children.
The trend
On the Ukrainian front, frequency jammers have established themselves as basic equipment in order to neutralize as many small killer drones as possible which now saturate the battlefield sky. “It’s a gigantic battle,” said a senior Ukrainian army officer specializing in electronic warfare. It’s also a race against time as technologies are developing so quickly. “Every three months, we have to think about new methods,” said the senior officer, assuring that Ukraine currently manages to jam 60% to 70% of Russian FPV drones.
The system looks like a large white thermos, weighing 4 kg, placed in a canvas bag attached to the soldier’s back. “It is one of the first portable electronic protection devices for the Ukrainian infantry,” explains Mykola, 42, a jammer specialist in the drone battalion of the 92nd brigade, which operates on the Eastern Front.
After more than two years of war since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the formidable FPV drones, relatively cheap and deployed by the hundreds of thousands by each side on the front line, have become indispensable, in addition to artillery classic. “Drones kill more soldiers on both sides than anything else at the moment,” Ukrainian ground forces commander Oleksandr Pavlyuk recently said in an interview with the daily newspaper The Times.
To neutralize them, the jammer emits interference on the same frequency as the drone’s control signal, thus cutting the connection between it and its pilot. The device presented by Mykola “is effective” at a distance of 30 m and causes “a total loss of control” of the enemy FPV, he assures.