Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 minutes takes stock for you every evening at 7:30 p.m. Between the strong declarations, the advances on the front and the dramatic results of the fighting, here is the gist of the day.
The fact of the day
Ukraine announced that it suffered new drone attacks and Russian bombings last night and in the morning of Wednesday, which left at least one dead. At dawn, an airstrike hit a house in a residential area of Beryslav, in the Kherson region (south), killing a 42-year-old man, regional governor Oleksandr Produkin said. The Khmelnytskyi region, in western Ukraine, was targeted by drones which were shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense. Debris caused damage and injured 18 people, two of whom are in serious condition, in the town of Slavouta, said its mayor Vassyl Sydor.
“During the night, the enemy hit the area near the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy then announced, affirming that the windows of certain administrative buildings and certain laboratories had exploded.
The number of the day
2026. It is on this date that the New Start agreement expires, the last bilateral treaty on nuclear arms control linking Russia and the United States. And its renewal is not well underway. “We believe that without a change in the deeply and fundamentally hostile attitude of the United States towards Russia, it is simply impossible to resume the dialogue on strategic stability, including on New Start,” he said. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian media. Likewise, Moscow is revoking its legal commitment not to test atomic bombs. The signals are not good…
Sentence of the day
The current situation shows that the enemy has fewer and fewer opportunities. And they will continue to shrink thanks to your exceptional combat efforts”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was positive while speaking to soldiers in the Donetsk region. It is his ministry which reports these remarks but without specifying the date of this trip. The ministry’s press release also states that an unidentified soldier told Sergei Shoigu that the Ukrainian forces were “in panic”. “We know all his approaches, his movements and his exits, we beat him, we don’t spare him. » The reliability of the source, however, raises questions.
Today’s trend
Bad news for Ukrainians. The Slovak president named a new coalition government this Wednesday led by populist Robert Fico, who has notably joined forces with a pro-Russian far-right party. “You will see a sovereign Slovak foreign policy,” said Fico, whose Smer-SD party came first in September’s parliamentary elections by promising to end military aid to Kiev.
Moreover, it is a pro-Russian MP, Juraj Blanar, who will occupy the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Finally, Andrej Danko, the leader of the far-right SNS party, Robert Fico’s coalition partner, became famous for shaking Mr. Putin’s hand, taking a selfie with the speaker of the Russian State Duma , Vyacheslav Volodin, and called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “my dear friend”. A hard blow for kyiv when the previous government had massively helped Ukraine.