Westerners hardened their tone against Russia at 62and day of the invasion in Ukraine. At the same time, explosions in the separatist region of Transdniestria, in Moldova, raise fears of an overflow of the conflict.
Posted at 8:00 p.m.
The United States is ready to “move heaven and earth” to win Ukraine, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Tuesday during a meeting with his allied counterparts in Germany. Berlin will itself authorize the delivery to Ukraine of around fifty “Guepard” type armored vehicles, specialized in anti-aircraft defense. This is a major turning point in the policy followed so far by Germany in its military support to Kyiv.
“The United States is raising the tone of its message,” observed Professor Anessa Kimball, director of the Center on International Security at Laval University. They will do “everything they can” to support Ukraine in the conflict without sending soldiers there, she said. However, “this is precisely what Russia wants” so that “the conflict is costly” for the United States and its allies, she argued.
“I don’t really know what they [les Américains] imagine as being a Ukrainian “victory”, asked Professor Michel Fortmann, a political scientist from the University of Montreal, by email. “For the moment, what is announced is a conflict which lasts and which gets bogged down. »
Explosions in Transdniestria
A series of explosions in Transdniestria, a region of Moldova bordering Ukraine, raises fears of an overflow of the conflict. “This is an attempt to increase tensions,” said Moldovan President Maïa Sandu. Kyiv has accused Moscow of seeking to “destabilize” the separatist and Russian-backed region.
“It’s part of Russia’s plan,” said Professor Kimball, pointing out that the border there has been unstable for years. “We see that the strategy that has changed is to take this side of the access to the Black Sea,” she explained, linking these events to the capture of Mariupol and the presence of Russian forces offshore. from Odessa.
Professor Fortmann, however, sees it as “a minor incident”. “We have to see what the Russians do with it in the next few days,” he suggested cautiously.
At least nine civilians killed on Tuesday
At least nine civilians died on Tuesday in bombings by the Russian army in eastern and southern Ukraine, according to reports released by local authorities.
In the east of the country, several localities have fallen in recent weeks and the Russian army is still advancing. In the Donbass regions, “the enemy is carrying out strikes on the positions of our troops along the entire length of the front line”, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. In the Luhansk region, the town of Popasna continues to be shelled, with three dead found under the rubble of a collapsed building. And in the Donetsk region, at least two civilians were killed and six others injured. In a shelling in Kharkiv, three people were killed and seven injured.
In the south, two Russian missiles hit the town of Zaporijjia on Tuesday morning, killing at least one person and injuring one. In Mariupol, the situation is still blocked. Russian forces continue to shell the Azovstal metallurgical complex there, where the last Ukrainian fighters are entrenched with, according to them, nearly 1,000 civilians.
Up to 8.3 million refugees, says UN
There is no overall civilian death toll. In Mariupol alone, the Ukrainian authorities speak of 20,000 dead. On the military side, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that around 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict. The Kremlin recently admitted to its side “significant losses”. On March 25, he acknowledged the death of 1,351 soldiers. Some Western sources report up to 12,000 dead Russian soldiers. Some 8.3 million people could flee Ukraine this year, the UN said on Tuesday. Just over 5.2 million Ukrainians have already left their country.
Putin is not ‘serious’, says Blinken
Russian President Vladimir Putin told United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Tuesday that he still believed in a positive outcome to negotiations with Ukraine, despite the continued fighting between the two countries. But Putin is not “serious” in his intentions to negotiate with Ukraine to end the conflict, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.
With Agence France-Presse