LIVE – War in Ukraine: Russians advance in Donbass, massive bombardment on Sloviansk

“In June 2022, consumer prices increased by 5.8% year on year”, writes INSEE in a report at the end of June. In May, this increase was 5.2%. This inflation is partly justified by the war in Ukraine, but for Michel-Édouard Leclerc – head of the Leclerc stores – “Ukraine has a good back”, and the rise in prices is not necessarily justified. The Ministry of the Economy has announced that it is launching an investigation into the subject.

“There are price repercussions on all the links in the chain which, in fact, may be hidden, especially since in these food sectors we have many, many intermediaries”, explains to BFM Business Pascale Hébel, associate director at consumer specialist Seaways. But “on more industrial products the price of the raw material weighs very little on the final price and there normally there should not be such a significant price increase as on a product like pasta, made with 80% wheat” .

Particularly hungry for projectiles of all kinds, from assault rifle bullets to 155 mm shells and precision missiles, the Ukrainian and Russian armies are waging a war of ammunition attrition, as with soldiers and equipment. Objective: Outlast the enemy.

“It’s the question of the moment,” confirms a senior European official who requested anonymity. “It’s a question of flows and stocks (…). What characterizes a high intensity conflict is the extremely high consumption of ammunition of all calibers”.

Regarding shells, for example, according to a report by the British institute RUSI, “Russia fires approximately 20,000 152 mm shells per day, compared to 6,000 for Ukraine”. But if Russia relies on a production distributed on its territory, with a mastered communications network, the Ukraine, it only resists thanks to the stocks and factories of the West.

In its daily report, the Ukrainian authorities declare that 36,500 soldiers have been killed on the Russian side since the beginning of the conflict, as well as several thousand military machines including 1,600 tanks, 187 helicopters and 2,648 vehicles.

The head of Russian diplomacy was offended Wednesday by the publication by the France 2 television channel of an interview between the French and Russian presidents, four days before Moscow launched its assault on Ukraine. “Diplomatic etiquette does not provide for unilateral leaks of (such) recordings,” Minister Sergei Lavrov noted during a trip to Vietnam.

“I am happy, I have enough to feed my family, my two children,” Vatalii, a resident of the Ukrainian capital of kyiv, who came to seek food aid, told BFMTV. “I worked in a casino, I earned between 500 and 700 euros a month, and now the casino is closed,” he says.

“When the war started my wife died, and my house was destroyed in an explosion. Now I sleep where I can and eat what I find. It’s crazy, it’s really crazy,” he says , explaining not to “consider my future”.

Vatalii, who is currently staying with friends in the suburbs of the capital, is not an isolated case, kyiv has registered an average of 270 additional unemployed people every day since the start of the war. One of the people distributing food aid assures that “there are a lot of people, there are more and more lately”.

Far from Moscow, the Kremlin’s propaganda has found excellent relays in Serbia, where hatred of NATO and the United States is latent, a legacy, among other things, of the bombing campaign carried out in 1999 to put an end to the war in Kosovo. Many of the seven million Serbs side with Moscow in the Ukrainian conflict.

In many European countries, authorities have cracked down on Russian media, but it is flourishing in Serbia, where the Serbian media itself repeats Kremlin messages over and over again. Under Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, the government’s control over the Serbian media has increased considerably in recent years. The few independent voices are under intense pressure.

In the weeks before the war, Informer, the leading Serbian tabloid, sung the praises of Russian President Vladimir Putin at length. “Ukraine attacked Russia,” headlined the newspaper two days before the invasion.

Russian forces continued to advance on Wednesday in the Donbass, where the inhabitants of Sloviansk, Moscow’s next target, are called upon to evacuate in the face of intense bombardment. “My main advice: evacuate!” Governor of the Donestk region Pavlo Kyrylenko told residents of the city of Sloviansk on Tuesday evening, adding that “during the week there was not a single day without bombardment. He reiterated his call this Wednesday morning.

He had announced a few hours earlier two dead and seven wounded in strikes which notably targeted the city market.

High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet castigated this Tuesday in Geneva the “intolerable” civilian toll of the Ukrainian conflict, with nearly 5,000 civilian victims confirmed since the start of the Russian offensive five months ago.

“Civilians are bearing the brunt of hostilities that do not seem to have an end,” lamented the High Commissioner before the Human Rights Council, on the sidelines of the presentation of a report on the human rights situation in Ukraine.

Freeing Brittney Griner, imprisoned in Russia since February, is a “priority” for Joe Biden, assured his spokesperson on Tuesday, indicating, rather tersely, that the president had read the poignant letter sent by the American women’s basketball star .

“The president read the letter,” said Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday during her daily press briefing, without expanding on Joe Biden’s reaction to this missive with painful overtones.

>> Our full article

Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks announced on Tuesday the restoration of compulsory military service amid rising tensions with neighboring Russia and war in Ukraine.

“Latvia’s current military system has reached its limits. At the same time, we have no reason to believe that Russia will change its behavior,” Artis Pabriks told reporters.

And welcome to this direct dedicated to the follow-up of the war in Ukraine