The Ukrainian president announced on Tuesday October 3 that he had visited the Eastern Front, in the area of the localities of Koupiansk and Lyman, the target of an offensive by Russian troops. “Today we visit our brigades fighting in one of the hottest zones, Kupiansk and Lyman”wrote Volodymyr Zelensky on Telegrampublishing a video in which he can be seen with soldiers in what looks like a fortified shelter. Follow our live stream.
New series of night attacks in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force reported Tuesday that it had shot down 29 drones and a missile launched by Russia in the south and east of the country. Air defense specifies that these were 29 Iranian-made Shahed 131/136 drones and an Iskander-K cruise missile. In total, Russia launched 31 drones and one missile from Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
A suspension of American aid? In the United States, the provisional budget of the federal administration adopted on Saturday does not include an envelope for kyiv. Trumpist elected officials, who are putting all their weight behind the current budget negotiations, have in fact managed to get Congress to adopt a text in which this aid does not appear. If this aid were to be suspended, “it would be devastating for Ukrainians”warns Mark Cancian, an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
Japan embarrassed by the visit of one of its senators to Russia. A pro-Russian Japanese senator visited Moscow, a first since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The visit took the Japanese government by surprise, which criticized this personal initiative on Tuesday. “The government was not informed by Mr Suzuki of his visit to Russia”, said Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno. Tokyo has strongly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the start and has adopted sanctions against Moscow, like its Western allies.
European ministers in kyiv. European Union foreign ministers met in kyiv on Monday for a “historic meeting” aiming to trace the lines of a “sustainable support” to Ukraine, which aims to join the EU. Faced with a slow Ukrainian counter-offensive and fears of a decline in Western support for Ukraine, it is also a question of showing Russia that it “must not count” on the “weariness” of the European Union, explained French Minister Catherine Colonna.