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 essentials of the day.
The fact of the day
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the eastern front near Kupiansk on Thursday, which has been threatened for several months by the Russians, whose bombings have killed four civilians in eastern and southern Ukraine. In the 22nd month of a frozen conflict in the South and East after a Ukrainian summer counter-offensive without a major breakthrough, President Zelensky visited a command post near Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region (North-East). “I wish you victory, be strong and don’t lose the initiative,” he said during a presentation of decorations to soldiers, according to a video published by the presidency on Telegram.
Sentence of the day
The exchanges do not take place because Russia does not want them. »
These are the words of the Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights who accused Russia of blocking any exchange of prisoners of war between the two countries. “All the initiatives and (…) efforts of Ukraine come up against the absence of the Russian will to recover its own citizens”, accused Dmytro Loubinets on Telegram, while, according to the Ukrainian media, the last exchange dates back to last August.
The commissioner indicated in August that Ukraine had managed to recover nearly 2,600 of its prisoners of war during some 50 exchanges organized since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The number of the day
240. This is in billions of euros the amount of military spending in the European Union last year. An amount up 6% compared to the previous year, the European Defense Agency (EDA) indicated on Thursday. This is the eighth consecutive year of growth for EU countries, at a time when many of them are defending the need for a significant increase due to the Russian threat and the war in Ukraine.
Six out of 27 countries have increased their military spending by more than 10% in 2022, and even by more than 30% in the case of Sweden. France only increased its military spending by 0.7% in 2022.
Today’s trend
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meets in North Macedonia, in the notable absence of foreign ministers from Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries who protest against the presence of the leader of Russian diplomacy.
This forum for dialogue between East and West is going through the most serious crisis since its creation forty-eight years ago, paralyzed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Invited, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sharply attacked the Organization, accusing it of having become an “appendage” of NATO and the EU. “Let’s recognize it, the organization is on the edge of the precipice and this question arises: does it still make sense to invest to revitalize it,” said Sergei Lavrov in front of dozens of his counterparts, in a speech vitriol aimed at the West and Ukraine.
His Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts considered that Lavrov’s presence “risked legitimizing the aggressor that is Russia as a full member of our community of free nations”. kyiv denounced the presence of “a state which unleashed the greatest armed aggression in Europe since the end of the Second World War”. The decision “to authorize [Sergueï] Lavrov’s participation is consistent with our common objective of keeping multilateralism alive,” said the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, on Wednesday evening.
As a reminder, the OSCE almost found itself without a presidency in 2024 – and therefore, without a budget. Malta agreed at the last minute to take the presidency in place of Estonia, Moscow not wanting to hear about a NATO member in this strategic position.
This should be endorsed in Skopje.