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
Russia carried out new “massive” strikes against Ukraine, killing at least five civilians and injuring at least 119 people mainly in kyiv and Kharkiv, according to Ukrainian authorities.
In kyiv, a building in the Solomianskii district was partly destroyed. Two people died and 49 others were injured, announced its mayor Vitali Klitschko. In addition, two civilians died and 16 people were injured, including a child, in another Russian strike in the capital region. The second city of Ukraine, Kharkiv, located in the North-East, not far from the Russian border, was the target of “at least four strikes”, in which a 91-year-old woman lost her life. and 52 people were injured, including six children. Briefly cut off in the morning for several tens of thousands of Ukrainians, electricity was “completely” restored in kyiv in the afternoon, the municipal administration said on Telegram.
As usual, the Russian army, for its part, assured that it had only targeted military installations which were all “destroyed” using long-range missiles and explosive drones. Ukraine’s military said Russia fired 99 missiles early Tuesday. Seventy-two were shot down, including ten hypersonic Kinjals, by Patriot air defense systems, “a record”.
Sentence of the day
Russia bears sole responsibility for this escalation which nothing can justify and which primarily affects civilian populations. »
These are the words of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs which “condemned” this Tuesday the new massive Russian strikes. “Russia is continuing its strategy of terror aimed at destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in order to undermine the resilience of the Ukrainian people in this second winter of the conflict,” the ministry continued in its press release.
The number of the day
1. At least one person was killed on Tuesday and five others injured after Ukrainian strikes on the Russian region of Belgorod, according to its governor. The Russian military said earlier Tuesday that the Belgorod border region had been targeted by 17 Ukrainian missiles and that all had been shot down.
Today’s trend
The new series of Russian strikes comes the day after Vladimir Putin threatened to “intensify” his bombings, in retaliation for an attack on Belgorod on Saturday (25 dead), which itself followed a series of strikes a day earlier (around forty deaths). In a statement, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, deemed the Russian strikes “alarming” which left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians “without electricity [et] without water”, at a time when temperatures are negative in Ukraine.
However, almost two years after the start of its invasion, Russia seems determined to increase its attacks, a means in particular of forcing kyiv, which lacks ammunition, to use weapons delivered by the West.
Vladimir Putin’s “objective” is “to exhaust Ukraine’s stocks” and make it “capitulate”, believes General Jérôme Pellistrandi interviewed this Tuesday by our colleagues at Franceinfo. “Each time there are these air campaigns, the defense reacts”, the Russian president wants “the Ukrainians to spend as much as possible on anti-aircraft missiles supplied by the West”, he again analyzes, stressing that “Moscow knew replenish its stocks since last winter” and now has “around 800 hypersonic missiles […] very difficult to intercept.