Exactly three months ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. At dawn on the 90th day of the war, Russian troops are still concentrating their offensive on the last pocket of resistance in the Luhansk region, in the Donbass, where they are trying “Eliminate All Living”according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Faced with Russian pressure, Kyiv insists on stocking up on arms and has received Western support in this regard. Twenty countries have pledged to supply additional arms to Ukraine.
We take stock of the events that have shaped the last few hours.
Thousands of people partially surrounded in Severodonetsk
The fate of Severodonetsk is similar to that of Mariupol. “At this point, I’m not going to say, ‘Get out, evacuate.’ There I say “Stay in your quarters””said the governor of the Lugansk region, Sergei Gaidai. According to him, in its offensive in the region, Russia has mobilized 12,500 soldiers.
Ukrainian authorities have also informed the United Nations that on May 21 a bridge leading to the region’s administrative center, the city of Severodonetsk, was destroyed, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said on Monday evening.
The city is thus partially enclosed and now accessible via a single road. Some residents managed to leave Severodonetsk this weekend, but according to Stéphane Dujarric, local authorities estimate that several thousand civilians are still in the city and need emergency assistance.
Severodonetsk is bombed ” Around the clock “ from the Russians who “Using scorched earth tactics, intentionally destroying the city”had alerted the Ukrainian governor of the Luhansk Oblast, Serguiï Gaïdaï, on Sunday.
Several victims in the Donetsk region
According to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, three people were killed and six injured in renewed bombings in the Donetsk region on Monday. Seven people were killed on Sunday.
According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, heavy fighting also broke out near Bachmout, south of Severodonetsk and Kramatorsk. The President of the Regional Council of Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, east of Donbass, also announced that several rockets had been fired in the region.
Twenty countries will deliver arms to Kyiv
Twenty countries have pledged to provide Ukraine with additional weapons to deal with Russian forces. At a second meeting of “Ukrainian Defense Contact Group”44 countries met virtually to discuss military aid to Ukraine at this stage of the conflict.
Among the equipment to be delivered to Ukraine, Denmark has notably pledged to send a Harpoon anti-ship missile system, which could allow Ukraine to counter the blockade imposed by the Russian Navy on the port of Odessa, which is responsible for the country’s wheat exports are crucial are themselves crucial for many other countries. These missiles would probably even reach Crimea, which Moscow has occupied since 2014.
For its part, the Czech Republic has pledged to provide combat helicopters, tanks and missiles.
This contact group is scheduled to meet in person on June 15 in Brussels on the fringes of a NATO ministerial meeting.
Resignation of a Russian diplomat against the war in Ukraine
Boris Bondarev, adviser to the Permanent Mission of Russia in Geneva, announced with a bang his resignation in response to the war decided by President Vladimir Putin in a letter published Monday, May 23. In it he claims to have “I’ve never been so ashamed” of his country, statements that have since been confirmed by several diplomatic sources, as reported by AFP.
He is the most senior Russian diplomat to defect since the invasion of Ukraine.
“Throughout my 20-year diplomatic career, I have seen various turns in our foreign policy, but never have I been as ashamed of my country as I was on February 24 of this year.”, date of the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, he writes. this war “is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but perhaps the most serious crime against the Russian people”, he continues and castigates the actions of Minister Sergey Lavrov. Today, “The State Department is not a diplomat. It’s about warmongering, lies and hatred.”he says, while in Kyiv the first Russian soldier was sentenced to life imprisonment for a war crime.
Zelenskyi ready to meet with Putin just to end the war in Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that Vladimir Putin was the only Russian official he was willing to meet and that the only topic of conversation was the end of the war in Ukraine.
Via video link to the Economic Forum in Davos, the Ukrainian President also said that organizing talks between his country and Moscow is becoming increasingly difficult due to Russia’s attitude towards civilians in the Ukrainian territories it occupies.
Any attempt to take over Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, would claim hundreds of thousands of lives, he said.
The death toll from Russia in Afghanistan is approaching the nine-year mark
In three months, thousands of people, civilians and soldiers, have perished with no quantified toll. For the city of Mariupol alone, however, the Ukrainian authorities speak of 20,000 dead.
At the military level, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry estimates Russian losses at more than 29,200 men, 204 aircraft and nearly 1,300 tanks since the invasion began on February 24.
The Kremlin, for its part, conceded “Significant Losses”.
Western sources speak of around 12,000 Russian soldiers killed, a French military source confirmed to AFP an estimated number of around 15,000. These losses over three months are close to the losses recorded by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in nine years,” stresses the British Ministry of Defense. For its part, Ukraine has not provided any information on its own military losses.
The war has also turned the country’s demographics upside down: more than eight million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In addition, there are 6.5 million who have fled abroad, more than half of them – 3.4 million – to Poland.
The First Lady of Ukraine is launching a psychological support program
Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska announced Monday that she is launching a nationwide psychological support program in cooperation with the World Health Organization in response to the mental health crisis in Ukraine.
“No Ukrainian, whether adult or child, can be sure that he will wake up tomorrow”Ms Zelenska said in a video statement posted on social media. “Given what Ukrainians went through during the occupation – at the front, in air raid shelters, under bombing, abroad – they need rehabilitation just like the physically injured. »
“Russia’s war has shown horrors we could not have imagined”said Mrs. Zelenska. “WHO is committed to protecting the most important human rights – life and health. However, both are injured in Ukraine. »
She added that the country plans to lead by example to strengthen global support for the mental well-being of war survivors.
war in Ukraine. Severodonetsk partially encircled, delivery of weapons… The point in the night ENLARGE