Did you miss the latest events on the war 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
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the partially Russian-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine on Thursday, the day after a trip to the eastern front. He notably went, according to images from the presidency, to Possad-Pokrovské, a locality which suffered significant destruction and was in the hands of the Russian army until its withdrawal in the fall of 2022.
Volodymyr Zelensky also visited a power station damaged during the wave of strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities throughout the winter. According to the Telegram account of the presidency, this trip focused on reconstruction in the Kherson region and the head of state chaired a meeting there on the subject.
Russia occupied a large part of the Kherson region, including its eponymous capital, from the start of its invasion in February 2022. A Ukrainian counter-offensive, however, forced Russian troops to withdraw from the northern part and retreat last November to the other side of the Dnieper, the great local river.
sentence of the day
I am convinced that we will not stop until all perpetrators of international crimes committed in Ukraine are brought to justice.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) and Ukraine on Thursday signed an agreement on the creation of a country office, announced the court which last week issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s just a start, a good start,” Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said of the agreement he signed on behalf of Ukraine in The Hague, where the court sits.
“I am convinced that we will not stop until all the perpetrators of international crimes committed in Ukraine are brought to justice,” he added, quoted in a press release. And this “regardless of their political or military position”, he continued, after welcoming the “historic” decision of the ICC to issue an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin for the war crime of “deportation” of Ukrainian children.
The number of the day
4. This is the number of Slovak MiG-29 fighters that were delivered to Ukraine on Thursday. The nine other promised aircraft will be delivered “in the coming weeks”, said Martina Kakascikova, a spokeswoman for the Slovak Ministry of Defense. Out of all thirteen Slovak fighters, three will be used to supply spare parts. Bratislava had previously declared that it will also deliver part of the Koub anti-aircraft defense system to kyiv.
The trend of the day
This is called a communication hiccup. The Ukrainian army said on Thursday that Russian troops had withdrawn from the town of Nova Kakhovka, located across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. Nova Kakhovka, which had 45,000 inhabitants before the war, is located northeast of Kherson, a city that the Russians had abandoned in November 2022 to retreat to the other side of the Dnieper. This city is also near the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, taken by the Russians at the start of their offensive against Ukraine at the end of February 2022.
But at the end of the day, an official of the Russian occupation in the Kherson region denied any withdrawal of the Russian army from the city. The Ukrainian army ended up admitting that it was wrong.