Western heads of state and government were engaged in a marathon of meetings in Brussels on Thursday to coordinate their action against Russia, whose forces seem to be bogged down, a month after its launch of the invasion of Ukraine.
Three summits – NATO, G7 and European Union – follow one another all day, each hosting a videoconference intervention from kyiv by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
During the night of Wednesday to Thursday, Mr. Zelensky launched a call to demonstrate for Ukraine throughout the world, after having multiplied the speeches in front of the European, American and Japanese parliaments.
“Go ahead with Ukrainian symbols to defend Ukraine, to defend freedom, to defend life!” “, he launched via a video message in English. “Meet in the squares, in the street, show yourself and make yourself heard! “The world must stop the war”.
He also addressed the Russians: “If you can, leave Russia and don’t pay your taxes for this war,” he said.
“Clean our floor”
According to the White House, Thursday’s summits will mainly aim to consolidate the arsenal of sanctions already taken, avoid attempts to circumvent Moscow, and strengthen NATO’s position in Eastern Europe over time.
NATO will deploy four new battlegroups in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia to bolster its defenses against Russia on its eastern flank, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced.
“What we would like to hear is that this shared firmness that we have seen over the past month will last as long as it takes,” said Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to US President Joe Biden, who arrived in the city on Wednesday evening. Belgian capital and who is then due to travel to Poland on Friday.
Washington must also announce Thursday “a set of sanctions that concern both political figures” and “oligarchs”, said Mr. Sullivan.
In an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba expressed concern about “a certain slowdown in the EU decision-making process” over the “last ten days”, adding that ” those who think they have done enough are wrong”.
President Zelensky also called on NATO to supply his country with arms. “Clean our soil from invaders and restore peace to Ukraine,” he implored.
Hailing the “extraordinarily courageous” resistance of the Ukrainians, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday the delivery of 6,000 additional anti-tank missiles to kyiv. London has already delivered 4,000 of these weapons to Ukraine.
The British government also announced on Thursday a new series of sanctions targeting 59 Russian personalities and companies and six Belarusian entities.
Sweden and Germany announced for their part the delivery to Ukraine of respectively 5000 and 2000 new anti-tank weapons. The Ukrainian forces have already received 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger-type surface-to-air missile launchers taken from the reserves of the Bundeswehr, the German army.
Candlelight Hospital
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused Russia of “committing war crimes in Ukraine”.
“We have seen many credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities,” he said in a statement, stressing that it will be up to the courts to determine the responsibilities.
On the ground, at least four people died, including two children, and six others were injured in Russian strikes on the town of Rubizhne, near Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine, the governor of the region, Serguiï Gaïdaï.
The governor added that the balance sheet was likely to “turn out to be much higher”. “The Russian air force started dropping phosphorus bombs on Rubizhne,” he charged.
Mr. Zelensky said on Tuesday that nearly 100,000 people were still trapped in the ruins of Mariupol, a large besieged city in the south of the country, “without food, without water, without medicine, under constant bombardment”.
At Hospital Number One, patients are treated in the basement by candlelight, the city council said Wednesday.
“The inhabitants of the Livoberezhny district are beginning to be deported en masse to Russia,” the city council accused Thursday, saying that “about 15,000 residents of Mariupol are targeted by this illegal deportation”. These accusations were immediately unverifiable.
Some 4.3 million children – more than half of Ukraine’s child population – have had to leave their homes to flee insecurity and fighting sparked by the Russian army invasion on February 24, the report said. Thursday.
” Big mistake “
According to Washington, the Russian army’s offensive is stalling, particularly in the vicinity of the capital kyiv.
“The Ukrainians managed to push the Russians back 55 km east and northeast of kyiv,” a senior Pentagon official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Failing to succeed in seizing large cities, the Russian army continues to bombard them intensely. The Ukrainian general staff recorded 250 Russian aerial sorties on Wednesday, 60 more than on Tuesday.
“The main targets of the enemy remain the military and civilian infrastructure in the regions of kyiv, Cherniguiv and Kharkiv,” he said Thursday on his Facebook page.
The Russian invasion “is bogged down despite all the destruction it causes day after day,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian navy also claimed Thursday to have destroyed a Russian troop transport ship anchored in the port of Berdiansk, a city near Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, the first announcement of the destruction of a ship of this size.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a “big mistake” with the invasion of Ukraine, whose resistance he “underestimated”, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, said Thursday before the opening of extraordinary summit of the Alliance.
“(Ukrainian) President Zelensky will address the Alliance leadership and they will consider their support to help Ukraine exercise its right to self-defense,” Stoltenberg said.