Did you miss the latest events on the war started by Vladimir Putin 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
Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday called on Westerners to send him “as soon as possible” fighter planes, starting with the Mig-29s offered by Warsaw despite a warning from the Kremlin. “Make a decision as soon as possible, send us planes! “Launched the Ukrainian president to Westerners in a new video posted on his Telegram channel. He thanked Warsaw for offering to send these planes to Ukraine and regretted that “no decision” “has (yet) been taken”. The day before, Poland had taken the Americans by surprise by saying that it was “ready to move all its Mig-29 planes without delay and free of charge to the Ramstein base (in Germany) and to make them available to the United States government. “, so that the latter deliver them to Ukraine.
The United States fears a widening of the conflict, because Russia has warned that it will consider the sending of such planes by a third country as a direct involvement in the conflict. Washington therefore flatly rejected the Polish proposal.
The number of the day
160. This is the number of Russian oligarchs and parliamentarians added to the European Union’s blacklist of persons and entities banned from entering and whose assets in Europe are frozen. The Twenty-Seven decided on Wednesday to extend their sanctions against Moscow and Minsk following the invasion of Ukraine by targeting 14 oligarchs and businessmen involved in key sectors of the Russian economy ( agriculture, steel industry, telecoms, etc. and members of their families, as well as 146 members of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of the Russian Parliament). The European blacklist, established since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, now includes 862 people and 53 entities in total.
The phrase
“I don’t think Putin ever imagined that financial sanctions could be so powerful”
These are the words of Josep Borrell, launched at the end of a debate on security in Europe in the European Parliament, in Strasbourg. “When we said that there would be ‘serious consequences’, Putin laughed, now he is not laughing anymore,” declared the head of European diplomacy.
The trend of the day
In Russia, Western sanctions are increasingly making their effects felt. Thus, the rating agency Fitch has again lowered the rating it gives to the debt of Russia, a decision meaning that the risk of a sovereign default is in its eyes “imminent”. A default by Moscow would be the first since the great financial crisis of 1998. Another effect of the sanctions: according to the Russian daily KommersantMoscow may soon run out of drugs, including insulin, in addition to other foreign-made products.
According to Cyrille Bret, associate researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute, that we receive live on Instagram to answer our readers’ questions, it is this “economic asphyxiation” that could truly stop Vladimir Putin. “The Europeans have taken an absolutely extraordinary and historic series of sanctions. It is the resistance and solidarity of the Europeans among themselves, and with the Ukrainians, which can bring the Russian troops to stop their operations, this is the bet that the Europeans are making”.
The Kremlin denounced the “economic war” declared by the United States against Russia, following Washington’s announcement of an embargo on Russian oil and gas imports, in addition to other sanctions. And tomorrow, Thursday, diplomacy will try to regain its rights, with an announced meeting in Turkey of Russian foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov, Ukrainian Dmytro Kuleba, with their Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Cavusoglu as mediator. Meanwhile, continental European stock markets rebounded around 7% on Wednesday night. In Paris, the CAC 40 rose by 7.13%.