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 results of the battles, here are the main points of the day.
The fact of the day
Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed Monday on BFMTV-RMC that Russia would not participate as a state in the Paris Olympic Games. The IOC’s decision to ban Russia as a state but to allow Russian athletes to participate under a neutral banner is “proportionate and fair” because Moscow “has decided on a war of aggression which has lasted for more than two years”, he said. justified the French president.
To the LFI deputies and environmentalists who demanded, in vain, at the end of February from the IOC, “to apply to Israel, during the next Olympic Games, the same sanctions as to Russia and Belarus”, Emmanuel Macron indicated that it was “a very different situation.” “Israel was the victim of a terrorist attack […] We cannot say that Israel is an attacker and therefore the distinction is very clear,” he said.
The number of the day
2. This is the number of Ukrainian civilians who were killed this Monday by a Russian airstrike on a school in the Kharkiv region (north-east). “Two men aged 63 and 65 died on the spot,” said the governor, Oleg Sinegoubov, on Telegram, adding that two women aged 63 and 66 were injured and hospitalized. He claimed that a “guided aerial bomb” had hit a “school establishment” in the town of Loukyantsi, located north of Kharkiv and very close to the Russian border. Earlier, Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region announced the death of four more civilians on Sunday evening in the town of Siversk.
Today’s statement
“ The whole world has seen what real defense is. He sees that it is possible. And the whole world saw that Israel was not alone in this defense. » »
Volodymyr Zelensky was a bit bitter on Sunday evening over Western military support which helped Israel intercept almost all of Iran’s explosive missiles and drones. In fact, Ukraine is waiting in vain for Western aid to enable it to face Russian strikes. “It is not rhetoric that protects the sky,” added the Ukrainian president, urging kyiv’s supporters not to “turn a blind eye to Russian missiles and drones” which target Ukraine.
Today’s trend
Ukraine still has difficulty coping with the Russian push. On the eastern front, where “the situation is tense”, Russian troops, “in numerical superiority”, are attempting a breakthrough “west of Bakhmut”, indicated the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Roustem Oumerov, after a visit to soldiers in the combat zone.
A little earlier, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Oleksandr Syrsky, had also assured that Russia was concentrating its efforts in this area in order to seize Chassiv Yar, about 20 km to the west of Bakhmut. Such a conquest would offer the Russian military a chance to advance in the region.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
Russia thus wants to “create the conditions for a deeper advance” towards Kramatorsk, the main city in the region under Ukrainian control and an important railway and logistics hub, noted the commander in chief. Oleksandr Syrsky, who stressed that the forces defending Chassiv Yar had received additional weapons, had recognized the day before that the situation on the eastern front had “considerably deteriorated”.