DIRECT. War in Ukraine: Moscow accuses Kiev of having ruined a truce

“Cursed be the war”, “Putin is bombing my beautiful Ukraine”… Several hundred demonstrators protested Saturday noon on the Old Port in Marseille against the invasion of Ukraine by Russia

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called on his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to end the military operation in Ukraine during a telephone interview, a Turkish diplomatic source said. Cavusoglu told Lavrov that a further escalation of military tensions would not benefit anyone.

While the Kremlin accuses the Ukrainian president of having postponed the idea of ​​a truce while negotiating (read below), Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Putin, says he is always ready to welcome the belligerents to Minsk to discuss. “Let them come even today,” he said. We will do everything possible to prevent war and bloodshed,” he told the official BelTA news agency.

According to Moscow, the Ukrainian authorities have refused to launch negotiations. “Yesterday during the day (Friday), expecting negotiations, the Russian president ordered a halt to the advance of the bulk of Russian forces,” said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. . “Since the Ukrainian side refused negotiations, the advance of Russian forces resumed today,” he added.

In reaction to the decision by Warsaw, Prague and Sofia (below at 6:44 a.m.) to close their airspaces to Russian planes, Russia is closing its airspace to planes linked to Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic. This closure also concerns transit flights. However, exceptions are possible.

“Mothers, wives, daughters of Russian soldiers! Bring your men home. They came to a foreign land to kill innocent people, to destroy our homes. Your power is lying,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted, insisting that Ukrainian forces “do not receive them with flowers.”

The two members of the European Union would agree to exclude Russia from the system of financial exchanges.

Russian forces have not taken the town of Melitopol in southeastern Ukraine as they claim, British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey told BBC radio. Similarly, Kiev would only be grappling with “Russian special forces and pockets of paratroopers”. “The reality is that the armored columns that were coming down from Belarus and the north and that were supposed to encircle Kiev are still far north because they were held up by this incredible Ukrainian resistance,” Heappey added.

A Ukrainian deputy, Olha Stephanichyna, assured Le Monde, photo in support, that the armed forces had distributed weapons to all members of Parliament on Thursday, a few hours after the launch of the Russian offensive.

On Twitter, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo announces that Belgium has agreed to supply 3,800 tons of fuel to Ukraine, and that it will also deliver 2,000 machine guns to the army. Early this morning, the Ukrainian president said his allies had agreed to supply him with weapons (read at 8:48).

According to a source from the Russian Ministry of Defense to the Interfac agency, “it is obvious that a malfunction in the guidance system of a Ukrainian medium-range surface-to-air missile system Buk-M1” is at the origin of the destruction caused to several floors of this building (read below at 12.15 p.m. and 8.30 a.m.). And she blames it on “the lack of routine maintenance” of aging weapons “that the Ukrainian armed forces have possessed since Soviet times”.

France, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, announces the holding of an extraordinary meeting of the Council of European Ministers in charge of Energy on Monday in Brussels. Several European countries are heavily dependent on Russia for their gas imports.

” We are here. We are in Kyiv. We defend Ukraine”, insists President Zelensky in his three videos published in 24 hours, hailing the “heroic struggle of Ukrainians for their free future” and claiming to have “broken” Russian plans.

Anyone seen on the street after 5 p.m. will be treated as an enemy, warns the town hall of the Ukrainian capital. “All civilians who are on the streets during the curfew will be considered members of the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” city mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

“In the context of the conflict in Ukraine, these threats, received by e-mail or shared on social networks, target the media RT France and, in particular, its president Xenia Fedorova”, details the French version of the Russian news channel. continuously RT in a press release.

The Head of State promises the two former countries of the USSR to “stand by their side to defend their sovereignty and their security”. Georgian President Salomé Zurabishvili has been invited to Paris early next week.

This decision has not yet been “approved” in the sense that it has not yet been decided, but things are progressing in this direction. Germany and Hungary do not yet seem to be in agreement.

Our photographer Philippe de Poulpiquet posted a video on Twitter showing the building hit by a missile attack this Saturday morning in Kiev.

“We managed to repel the enemy attacks. We defend our country, our land, the future of our children. The occupiers wanted to seize our capital and install their puppets. We broke their plan,” the Ukrainian president claims in a new video.

Hardly sanctioned by Europe and the United States, Russia could freeze the funds of foreigners in Russia and does not exclude nationalizing companies based abroad, reports Sky News.

The Polish authorities draw up a provisional assessment, after three days of Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It is a commercial boat transporting vehicles to Saint Petersburg, suspected of belonging to a Russian company targeted by EU sanctions against Moscow. He was diverted to Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), announces the maritime prefecture.

The Czech Republic will donate machine guns, automatic and sniper rifles, pistols and ammunition to Ukraine, worth 7.6 million euros, announced the Czech Minister of Defense.

Guest of RTL this Saturday morning, Colonel Pascal Ianni, spokesman for the Chief of the Defense Staff, assured that France was facing “a major commitment” that could last “for many months”. According to him, “the situation will become difficult in Kiev, which, if taken, would be a real strategic victory for Russia”.

The rating agency downgraded Ukraine’s long-term debt rating by one notch after the Russian invasion, shortly after the same decision by Fitch, which now considers it an extremely speculative investment with risk of default.