Russian missiles hit the city of Lviv on Saturday, a few kilometers from the Polish border, where US President Joe Biden was staying. The proof that Moscow can attack anywhere, despite its stated intention to concentrate on the Donbass, in the east of the country.
Updated at 0:08
Large city in western Ukraine, relatively spared from the fighting so far, Lviv suffered a series of strikes in the afternoon, two of which hit a fuel depot and injured five, authorities said. local.
A few hours later, US President Joe Biden delivered a very strong speech in Warsaw, reaffirming NATO’s determination to defend its territory and again expressing his anger at Vladimir Putin.
In an unexpected statement, the US president hinted that the Russian president should be impeached, after calling him a “butcher” hours earlier.
“For the love of God, this man cannot stay in power,” Biden said, at the very end of his address at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, before flying back to the United States.
Some observers have compared his statement to a call for regime change in Russia. But the White House hastened to react, qualifying the words of the American leader.
“What the president meant was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or over the region. He was not talking about Putin’s power in Russia or about regime change,” said a senior official in Washington, without specifying whether these remarks had been prepared.
Nuance or not, it seems that the conflict is becoming “more personal” between Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, said Richard Giguère, retired brigadier-general of the Canadian army and expert at the Graduate School of International Studies of the ‘Laval University.
The expert recalls that the American president called Putin a “war criminal” twice this week, in addition to qualifying him as a “butcher” on Saturday, during a particularly poignant meeting with families of Ukrainian refugees.
According to him, these very harsh words could be one of the consequences of Biden’s European journey, where the leader of the United States approached as close as possible to the theater of war. “He sees with his own eyes the impact of this war. There is less distance between him and the conflict,” he suggests.
Missiles over Lviv
Reaffirming that the United States did not wish to go to war with the Russian forces that invaded Ukraine, the President of the United States also renewed his warnings to Moscow about a possible spillover of the conflict.
“Don’t even think about advancing an inch into NATO territory,” he said, adding that responding to any attack on a member country was a “sacred duty” for the United States.
This scenario again seemed possible on Saturday, with the missile fire on Lviv, a few kilometers from Poland, which is part of the Atlantic Alliance.
Richard Giguère recalls the strategic importance of this city glued to the European Union, through which passes a large part of the supplies intended for Ukraine. And considers “worrying” any attack in this region, because of its proximity to the Polish border, and therefore NATO territory.
“There is a lot of tension, a lot of adrenaline. A mistake happens often, and sometimes that’s what takes on gigantic proportions”, he says, before suggesting, half seriously, that this attack was “perhaps not a coincidence”, with the presence of the American president on the other side of the border.
Resistance around Donetsk and Luhansk
Elsewhere on the ground, few major developments, the day after the change of strategy by Moscow, which announced Friday that it wanted to focus on the east of the country and return to its initial objective of “liberating” Donbass.
The Russian army came up against stiff resistance around Donetsk and Luhansk, the two major cities in this Russian-speaking region. The staff of the Ukrainian army claims to have shot down three planes, eight tanks and killed some 170 Russian soldiers.
At the other end of the country, the Russian army is said to have taken control of the town of Slavoutitch, where the personnel of the Chernobyl power plant reside, proof that it continues to shell Ukrainian territory almost everywhere, confirming fears expressed on Saturday by President Biden, who said he was “not sure” that Russia’s announcement to focus its offensive on Donbass meant a change of strategy in Ukraine.
The greatest vagueness also reigns as to the fate of the Russian generals who died in Ukraine, seven in number, according to Kyiv, two, according to Moscow. According to Western officials, another general, Vladislav Yerchov, was removed from his post by the Kremlin due to the heavy losses suffered by Russian troops.
The United States, finally, assured Kyiv that it had “no objection” to the transfer of Polish combat aircraft to Ukraine, said on Saturday the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kouleba , who had met US President Joe Biden in the morning. “The ball is now in Poland’s court,” added Kouleba.
With Agence France-Presse