The Social Democratic Party (SDP), the majority in the Finnish parliament and whose head of government, Sanna Marin is one of the vice-presidents, must debate from 9 a.m. on Saturday May 14 to find out whether it supports or not the will of the country to join NATO. This meeting takes place in a particularly tense context. Russia has cut off its electricity deliveries to the country. The Finnish subsidiary of the Russian electricity supplier InterRAO announced to suspend from Saturday its deliveries to this country, citing payment issues. The Finnish operator, however, assured that it could do without Russian electricity, which represents “less than 10%” of his needs. Follow our live.
Particularly intense fighting is underway in the Donbass. “There is heavy fighting on the border with the Donetsk region, near Popasna”, commented Friday evening on Facebook Serguiï Gaïdaï, Ukrainian governor of the Lugansk region. The local elected official also reported numerous losses of equipment and personnel on the Russian side. On the side of the port city of Mariupol, “very difficult” negotiations are taking place on the fate of the last defenders of this strategic place.
The South Ossetian separatists want an attachment to Russia. In Georgia, the pro-Russian authorities of the self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia announced on Friday that they wanted to organize a referendum on July 17 on its integration into Russia. This province, de facto independent of pro-Western Georgia, has been occupied by Moscow forces since a Russian military intervention in 2008.
The European Union allocates half a billion euros for kyiv. Faced with the continuation of the bombardments and the Russian offensive against Ukraine, the European Union announced that it was going to add 500 million euros to its financing of the Ukrainian military effort, increasing it “to 2 billion euros in total”. The recipe is “Claire”declared the head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell on the occasion of a G7 meeting in Wangels (Germany): we must “more of the same”namely more economic sanctions against Russia, support for kyiv, and also “continue to work to isolate Russia”.