Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? Don’t 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
The Russian electoral commission announced on Thursday the holding of local “elections” on September 10 in the territories that Russia occupies in Ukraine and for which it has claimed annexation in September 2022. These polls aim, according to the body, to elect regional assemblies and municipal councils, even though Moscow controls only part of the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk in the east, Zaporozhye and Kherson in the south.
Fighting is still raging there, and Ukraine is leading a counter-offensive aimed at liberating these territories. Almost a year and a half after launching its assault on Ukraine, Russia controls some 17% of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea, a peninsula annexed in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed the annexation of these areas last September, after having organized pseudo-referendums there, despite fighting and almost unanimous criticism from the international community.
sentence of the day
To our great regret, Australia continues to move forward with force in the wake of the authors of the Russophobic hysteria which is currently raging in the countries of the West.
This is a statement by Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Australia took sweeping legal action on Thursday to prevent Russia from building its new embassy a stone’s throw from its parliament, after intelligence services warned of a risk of espionage. The Kremlin immediately reacted by denouncing a “manifestation of hostility” which will call for a “reciprocal” response from Moscow.
The number of the day
20. This is the number of Russian explosive drones that kyiv claims to have shot down overnight from Wednesday to Thursday. The Ukrainian army also claims the destruction of a cruise missile. However, three others again hit the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky. These attacks come as Ukraine has launched the start of its counter-offensive and claims to have taken back “more than 100 km of territory”.
The trend of the day
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on Thursday. Rafael Grossi explained after his on-site visit that the situation was “serious” but in the process of stabilization after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. He made this trip, postponed for a day, when Ukrainian forces went on the offensive on Russian positions in southern and eastern Ukraine.
“The consequences are there and they are real,” admitted Rafael Grossi after spending three hours at the plant occupied since last year by the Russians. But “measures are being taken to stabilize the situation,” he added, without specifying their nature. His visit was intended in particular to determine whether this installation had been endangered by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper, the great Ukrainian river, whose water was used to cool its six reactors.
The plant has been the target of repeated bombings, blamed on Moscow and kyiv, and has been cut off from the electricity grid on several occasions, raising concerns about its safety.