Every day Midi Libre takes stock of the situation in Ukraine. This Wednesday, December 20, 2023, discover the latest news surrounding this conflict.
Kiev says nine people are injured in Russian attacks in southern Ukraine
Nighttime Russian attacks wounded nine people, including four children, in the southern city of Kherson, which is bombed almost daily, Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday, adding that attacks were also in the capital Kiev and Kharkiv, a large city in the north , be directed.
“In the bombing of Kherson this evening by the Russian occupiers, nine people were injured, including four children,” the city's mayor, Roman Mrochko, said on Telegram.
Among the injured, “a mother and her three children were hospitalized,” he added, indicating that their condition was “moderate.”
The Ukrainian Red Cross said on Wednesday that one of its warehouses was “destroyed” by a fire caused by a “direct artillery strike.”
This has “destroyed” supplies of humanitarian aid to the Kherson region, she added on X (formerly Twitter), sharing photos showing a building in ruins with its walls and roof gutted.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said the premises of two other NGOs, Shchedryk and HEKS/EPER, were also damaged.
She said she was “horrified” and reiterated that these attacks risk “denying civilians access to help in the middle of winter when they need it most.”
The Ukrainian air force said it had destroyed 18 of the 19 Iranian-made “Shahed” explosive drones fired by Russian forces from the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
According to the head of the capital's military administration, Serguiï Popko, several of these drones targeted Kiev.
According to him, this airstrike, the fifth on the capital since the beginning of December, caused no casualties or damage.
According to the Air Force, two S-300 surface-to-air missiles fired from Russia's Belgorod region also reached Kharkiv.
These rockets hit “one of the transport depots, which had already been completely destroyed by enemy fire,” the city’s mayor Igor Terekhov wrote on Telegram, without reporting any casualties.
Since the fall, Moscow has stepped up nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities at a time when Western support for Kiev appears to be waning.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday he was confident the United States would not “betray” Ukraine, but hours later American Senate leaders buried any hope of a new tranche of aid before the end of the year.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday evening that air defense in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine had shot down a Ukrainian drone.
The United States will not adopt an envelope for Ukraine by the end of the year
No new American funding for Ukraine in 2023: US Senate leaders noted on Tuesday that Congress would end the year without approving the $61 billion urgently demanded by Kiev and the White House.
Republican and Democratic negotiators have failed to reach an agreement despite repeated pressure from US President Joe Biden and calls from his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
Senate leaders Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Mitch McConnell said they hoped to vote on that aid “early next year.”
This is another disappointment for the Ukrainian president in a year marked by dashed hopes of a major counteroffensive, increasing pressure from Russia on the front lines and the European Union's failure to provide 50 billion euros in aid.
And the White House has already warned that it will “run out of resources for Ukraine by the end of the year.”
Volodymyr Zelensky personally came to Washington in mid-December – his third trip to the American capital in a year – to try to increase the pressure. The US would “not betray” Ukraine, he hoped at a press conference on Tuesday.