Did you miss the latest events on the tensions 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:
news of the day
It’s Russia’s turn to sanction Europe. Gazprom, the Russian gas leader, has announced that it has suspended deliveries to Bulgaria and Poland, demanding that these countries pay in rubles. The Polish company PGNiG confirmed on Wednesday “the complete cessation of the supply of natural gas supplied by Gazprom under the Yamal contract”. Despite its heavy dependence on Russian gas, Poland assured, through its Climate Minister, Anna Moskwa, that there would be no shortage.
Warsaw thus says it is ready for “total independence from Russian raw materials” but condemns a “direct attack” from Russia. The Bulgarian government affirmed that Sofia had “fully discharged” its obligations and had “made all the payments required under the contract in due time”, its Prime Minister denouncing an “unacceptable blackmail”. The two countries will be supplied by their European neighbors, assures the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The EU had “prepared” for an interruption of Russian gas and is preparing “a coordinated response”, she reacted.
sentence of the day
“If someone intends to interfere from the outside in what is happening [en Ukraine] and to create unacceptable threats for Russia, they must know that our response (…) will be swift and withering. »
Vladimir Putin assured the Russian Parliament that he would not hesitate to use the most modern weapons available to his army in the event of external intervention in Ukraine. “We have all these tools that no one else can boast about right now. We are not going to brag: we are going to use them if necessary. And I would like everyone to know it, ”said the Russian president.
Since the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine, the master of the Kremlin has already reminded several times that Russia has nuclear weapons, and the test firings of new generation missiles have followed one another in recent weeks.
The number of the day
1.145. This is the number of wanted notices, with names, photos and other essential information that have been posted on the site Mariupol Lifelisting the missing inhabitants of the besieged city.
The trend of the day
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense indicated this Wednesday morning that the Russian army had taken control of several localities in the Donbass: Velyka Komychouvakha and Zavody, in the Kharkiv region; Zarichne and Novotochkivské, in the Donetsk region. The Russians are thus progressing towards Severodonetsk, one of the main cities of the region, through which many refugees pass. On the military level, Russia also announced that it had destroyed “hangars with a large quantity of foreign arms and ammunition” delivered by Westerners.
The tension does not fall in Transnistria, where the separatist authorities announced that Kolbasna, bordering Ukraine, had been the target of fire. This village, where a Russian ammunition depot is located, had been flown over a few hours earlier by “several drones”, according to the “Ministry of the Interior” of Transnistria.