KYIV | Kiev was preparing for the worst overnight from Friday to Saturday, after President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a warning of an imminent attack by the Russian army, 48 hours after its offensive against Ukraine ordered by Vladimir Putin.
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Consult our complete file on the Russian invasion in Ukraine
“We cannot lose the capital. I address our defenders, men and women from all fronts: tonight the enemy will use all their forces to break through our defenses in the most vile, harsh and inhuman way. This night, they will try to seize” Kiev, he said in a video address broadcast Friday evening on the website of the presidency.
The first Russian military units entered the north of the Ukrainian capital on Friday, killing people there.
And overnight from Friday to Saturday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said it destroyed a helicopter and a Russian SU-25 ground attack plane near separatist areas in the east, as well as a Russian transport plane IL-76 near Vassylkiv. “Violent” fighting is taking place in this city, located about thirty kilometers southwest of Kiev, “where the occupiers are trying to land airborne troops”, added the ministry on its Facebook page.
As a result of this conflict, which could be the most serious in Europe since 1945, some 100,000 people have already been displaced and 50,000 have left Ukraine, reported the UN, where Russia has vetoed the Security Council to a resolution deploring his “aggression”. This proves that “the world is with us, that the truth is with us, that victory will be ours!” Tweeted the Ukrainian president after this vote.
The Atlantic Alliance, for its part, has begun to deploy elements of its reaction force to be able to quickly deal with any eventuality.
At the same time, the Ukrainian president said he had discussed with Joe Biden “concrete defense assistance”.
Under pressure to do more, the West, including the United States, also imposed sanctions on Vladimir Putin himself and on his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a rare and very symbolic fact. A measure immediately qualified by Russian diplomacy as a sign of “absolute impotence” and a sign that relations with the West are close to the “point of no return”.
London has also banned the private planes of Russian oligarchs from its skies.
“Any war leaves the world worse off than it found it. War is always a failure of politics and humanity, a shameful capitulation, a rout before the forces of evil,” Pope Francis denounced in a tweet translated into several languages, including Russian, a fact. extremely rare.
“Drug addicts” and “neo-Nazis”
Despite this, the master of the Kremlin seems determined to continue his offensive, until obtaining a change of regime in Ukraine. On Friday, he described the members of the Ukrainian head of state’s team as “drug addicts” and “neo-Nazis”.
“Take power in your hands!”, He launched to the address of the Ukrainian soldiers. “It seems to me that it will be easier to negotiate between you and me,” he added.
In a sign of defiance, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Washington fears is the victim of an “atrocious act”, posted a video on social networks in which we see him in the street, claiming to be still in Kiev and determined to “defend” Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron called him twice on Friday, in the middle of the afternoon and shortly before midnight, to take stock of the situation with him, the French presidency said.
Rifles for civilians
On the ground of operations in Kiev, in the Oblon district, AFP saw a civilian killed on a sidewalk on Friday and paramedics rescued another, prisoner of the carcass of a car crushed by an armored vehicle.
“They distributed the rifles, loaded them for us and here we are,” says Yuri Korchemniy, who had never held a weapon in his life before joining a battalion of civilians ready to defend Kiev step by step against the enemy. Russian.
The Ukrainians also reported clashes in two localities between 40 and 80 km north of the capital. Russian troops were also, they said, approaching Kiev from the northeast and east.
After many people fled on Thursday, the center of Kiev, a metropolis that normally has some three million inhabitants and is now under curfew, looked like a ghost town.
Armed and armored men were positioned at the main crossroads near government buildings. Rare passers-by stopped to exchange the latest news, while sirens and explosions sounded under a cloudy sky.
“That night they started shelling civilian neighborhoods. It reminds us of (the Nazi offensive of) 1941”, Mr. Zelensky had dropped on Friday morning, pronouncing this sentence in Russian, a sign that it was intended for the Russians.
He praised the “heroism” of the population in the face of an invasion which, according to a report dating from midday Thursday, left at least 137 dead and 316 injured on the Ukrainian side. And assured that the soldiers were doing “their possible” to defend the country.
The invasion has thrown thousands of Ukrainians on the roads, who are flocking to the EU’s borders – notably in Poland, Hungary and Romania.
Kristian Szavla, 28, who arrived from western Ukraine, was one of the first to cross the Hungarian border. “We don’t want to experience what our friends and compatriots are going through in the east of the country, waking up to the sound of sirens with each Russian bombardment,” said this man, who left with a wife and child.
Retaliatory measures
President Zelensky criticized the Europeans for being too slow to support Ukraine and called on those with “combat experience” to come and fight alongside the Ukrainians.
NATO, whose leaders met on Friday by videoconference, has repeated in recent days that it would not send troops to this country.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, warned that no “inch of NATO territory” would be ceded and the Pentagon will send some 7,000 more troops to Germany.
For now, the Western camp is focused on tightening sanctions on Russia after it restricted its access to financial markets and technology.
But Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country has just asked the International Monetary Fund for emergency financial aid, urged them to go further.
“Cancel visas for Russians? Log out of Swift? Total isolation from Russia? Recall of ambassadors? Oil embargo? Today, everything must be on the table, because it is a threat for all of us, all of Europe,” he said.
Other retaliatory measures: Russia was suspended from all participation in Council of Europe bodies and the OECD closed the door to its membership.
It has also been excluded from the very popular Eurovision music competition, while the International Olympic Committee has urged international sports federations to cancel or relocate any event planned on its soil or at its Belarusian ally.
First consequence: the Champions League final will take place in Paris and not in Saint-Petersburg as planned, and the Sochi F1 Grand Prix scheduled for September has been canceled.
Stock market rebound
After soaring on Thursday, commodity prices remained very high, with a barrel of Brent oil above $100, even though US WTI had returned to around $95. World stock markets for their part rose sharply on Friday.
The Russian offensive began at dawn on Thursday, after Vladimir Putin recognized Monday evening the independence of two Ukrainian separatist territories in Donbass, sponsored by Moscow since 2014.
The master of the Kremlin took as a pretext an alleged “genocide” orchestrated by Kiev in these “republics”, denouncing moreover the “aggressive” policy of NATO.