Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? Do not 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
According to statements by Russian officials, two drone attacks in Moscow and the Black Sea were foiled on Friday. “Last night, the air defense forces destroyed a drone” over Moscow, said the mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin. “His carcass fell in the Parc des Expositions area and did not cause any significant damage to the building,” he said. No victim has been identified, added the elected official.
On the other side, in the Black Sea, Russia said it had thwarted a new Ukrainian attack a few hours earlier carried out with a naval drone against its military fleet. According to the Russian army, the drone ship “was destroyed by fire” from military ships without reaching its target.
sentence of the day
Some groups of saboteurs were able to hide in the vicinity of the locality
These are the words of Vladimir Saldo, a Russian official from the locality of Kozachi Laheri, located on the left bank of the Dnieper, in the Kherson region.
The Russian occupation administration thus recognized this Friday morning that a Ukrainian commando had crossed the Dnieper river, which marks the front, and temporarily occupied positions. But according to him, the area is now “completely cleared” of Ukrainian soldiers.
On Monday, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said that Ukrainian units had carried out “certain missions” on the left bank of the Dnieper, in occupied territory, while refusing to give more details.
The number of the day
2. This is the number of Lithuanian-Belarusian border crossings that Lithuania has decided to close this Friday. This decision is motivated by the risk posed by the Russian mercenary group Wagner, currently stationed in Belarus. Lithuania, a NATO member country, intends to respond to the growing tensions with its neighbors, including Belarus, which Vilnius accuses of provocations.
This decision is also motivated by the fight against smuggling. Finally, it also seeks to limit the number of trips between the two countries. In the first half of the year, Lithuanians crossed the border with Belarus 230,000 times. Vilnius fears that the Minsk authorities will take advantage of this to try to recruit spies among these travellers, by resorting to blackmail or other means of pressure.
The trend of the day
In Russia, the authoritarian regime continues to strongly suppress voices critical of the Russian intervention in Ukraine. This Friday, the Moscow City Court ordered the dissolution of the Sakharov Center association, one of the last pillars of the defense of human rights in Russia and designated since 2014 as a “foreign agent”.
In a press release, the court affirmed that the association had illegally organized events in Russia outside its geographical “area of activity” provided for in its statutes.
This is at least the third time that the authorities have recently used this reason to dissolve an association with critical opinions. In January, for the same reason, the same court dissolved the Moscow Helsinki Group, the oldest human rights NGO in Russia, and then, in April, the Sova Center, which specializes in the study of racism and xenophobia.
Grigori Melkoniants, the co-chairman of the Voters’ Rights NGO Golos, a leading election monitoring NGO, was also remanded in custody by a Russian court on Friday, accused of being involved in the activities of an “organization undesirable”. Justice accuses him of his links with the European Network of Election Observation Organizations, declared “undesirable” by the Russian authorities.