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
“Ukraine is and will remain France’s priority”, and this, “despite the multiplication of crises”, declared in Kiev its new Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné, whose first trip as head of diplomacy.
“It is in Ukraine that the defense of the fundamental principles of international law, of the values of Europe but also of the security interests of the French is at stake,” he insisted during a joint press conference. with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, France has supported kyiv both militarily and diplomatically, but has sometimes been accused of not doing enough.
“We provided the Ukrainian armed forces with artillery” as well as “anti-aircraft defense,” argued Stéphane Séjourné. “We are entering a new phase of defense cooperation”, with the particular objective of “strengthening Ukrainian capacity to produce on its soil” the weapons it needs.
The head of French diplomacy, appointed Thursday evening and who replaced her predecessor Catherine Colonna at short notice on this trip, also renewed Paris’ support for kyiv’s candidacy for membership in the EU.
Sentence of the day
There could be a war in Sweden. »
This statement from Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin sparks intense debate, but also precautionary purchases and renewed anxiety among children.
Sweden has not been involved in armed conflict since the Napoleonic Wars, so the realities of war are foreign to most Swedes.
The commander-in-chief of the Swedish armed forces, Micael Biden, followed suit a few days later, showing burned and bombed houses in Ukraine. “Do you think it could be Sweden?” “, he asked, explaining that it was not a simple rhetorical question.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine is a stage, not an end goal, with the goal of establishing a sphere of influence and destroying the rules-based global order. »
“The situation is serious, but it is also important to clarify that war is not upon us,” replied Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats and former Prime Minister.
The number of the day
40. This is the number of missiles that the Russian army is said to have launched, during the night from Friday to Saturday, to attack arms factories in Ukraine. Moscow claims to have reached “all” of its targets.
The Russian Ministry of Defense specified that it had hit, in particular with Kinjal hypersonic devices, installations “of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex” manufacturing shells, gunpowder and drones.
Today’s trend
In a video posted on YouTube, a woman accuses Volodymyr Zelensky of buying the former villa of Goebbels, a Nazi minister. “This is completely false information,” explains the company that owns the land to 20 minutes.
This video was just the latest attack on the Ukrainian president. Since the start of the war, Russian propaganda has wrongly attributed to him the ownership of luxurious properties all over the world, a way of undermining Western support for Ukraine by painting the image of a corrupt president.
Before this residence in Germany, Russian propaganda attributed luxurious villas to Volodymyr Zelensky all over the world, each time in places popular with the jet-set.