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
Vladimir Putin visits the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The Kremlin confirmed that the Russian president would discuss in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as reductions in oil production within the framework of OPEC +, of which Russia is a member. Treated as a pariah by Westerners and targeted by an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for the “deportation” of Ukrainian children, the Russian president has until now reserved his rare trips abroad to his closest allies. But with this diplomatic sequence, he continues his return to the international scene despite Western attempts to isolate him.
With the failure of the great Ukrainian summer counter-offensive on the front, the absorption of the shock of Western sanctions by the Russian economy and international attention focused on Gaza and Israel, Putin indeed seems more confident. So after his visit to the Middle East, Vladimir Putin will receive Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi in Russia on Thursday for talks.
Sentence of the day
I respectfully ask you not to invite the European Council to decide on these issues in December because the lack of obvious consensus would inevitably lead to failure. »
These are the words of Viktor Orban. The Hungarian Prime Minister wrote on Monday to Charles Michel, in charge of organizing the agenda and debates at the EU summit and to which AFP had access. In this letter, the nationalist leader called for two key decisions for Ukraine, on budgetary support and the opening of EU membership negotiations, to be removed from the agenda of the European summit in mid-December. .
The number of the day
3. This is the number of people killed this Tuesday by Russian shell fire in Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine which has been bombarded by the Russian army for months, the Ukrainian authorities announced on Tuesday.
Today’s trend
They were to be the spearhead of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south of the country. On the front which has generally been frozen for more than a year, the German Leopard 2 tanks that the Ukrainians dreamed of seeing break through the enemy lines and rush towards the Crimea, are doing something completely different: shelling the Russians, a bit like the artillery.
With these tanks, “an army can break through enemy lines and put an end to a long trench war,” assured Armin Papperger, director of the Rheinmetall arms group, at the beginning of 2023. The breakthrough did not happen. The Leopard 2 “is very effective, but to carry out large-scale offensives, it would have needed at least 100 to 150 to be able to progress,” regrets Rouslan, 25 years old and young deputy of a company of the 21st mechanized brigade.
Anton, the company commander, wants to go back on the offensive, in a “tank against tank” battle. It would be much more interesting for us, given the power and qualities of the German tank. “It wasn’t really planned this way,” headlined an article in the popular German daily Bild. And added in a long article: “instead of liberating the South (…) the Leopard 2A6 tanks delivered by Germany are used to prevent the east of the country from falling further under Russian control”.