French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Sunday against “the escalation of words and actions” in Ukraine, the day after his American counterpart Joe Biden’s remarks on Vladimir Putin whom he described as a “butcher”.
“I will not use this kind of language because I continue to discuss with President Putin,” said Mr. Macron, who asked to avoid “the escalation of words of actions” to “stop the war that Russia launched in Ukraine without going to war”.
Mr. Macron also indicated that he would speak to the Russian president “tomorrow or the day after tomorrow” to organize an evacuation operation from the city of Mariupol, in the south-east of Ukraine, besieged for weeks.
New humanitarian corridors were organized on Sunday to allow the evacuation of civilians from this strategic Ukrainian port located on the Sea of Azov, where more than 2,000 civilians were killed, according to the municipality.
Several attempts to establish safe routes for civilians to leave the city have failed, with both sides accusing each other of ceasefire violations.
These evacuations should take place in a very tense diplomatic context between Washington and Moscow, which denounced the remarks made by Mr. Biden in Poland on Saturday against Vladimir Putin whom he described as a “butcher” and whom he judged that he did not could “not stay in power”.
“After all, a head of state must stay sober,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday evening, quoted by TASS. “And of course, each time such personal insults reduce the window of opportunity for our bilateral relations under the current administration” American, he added.
President Biden’s statements were immediately tempered by the White House. “What the president meant is that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” she wanted to qualify. “He wasn’t talking about Putin’s power in Russia, or about regime change,” she added.
” The weather is beautiful “
On the military ground, the Russian noose seems to be loosening in certain regions of southern Ukraine.
In Mykolaiv, residents have found some hope after terrible weeks during which the Russian army tried in vain to blow up this lock town on the road to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port, found the AFP.
The front has even retreated significantly, with a Ukrainian counter-offensive on Kherson, some 80 kilometers to the south-east, the only major city for which the Russian army had claimed total control.
“The weather is beautiful,” regional governor Vitaly Kim commented on Saturday in one of those social media videos that have made him popular since the start of the Russian invasion. “And without strikes, he would be even more so”.
It’s a completely different situation about 120 km northeast of kyiv, where the city of Cherniguiv is surrounded by Russian forces and it is impossible to evacuate massive civilians and wounded, announced its mayor, Vladislav Atroshenko.
In the Cherniguiv region, the Russian army “forcibly distributes its so-called humanitarian aid for propaganda purposes in the Russian media”, says the Ukrainian army.
In this chaotic situation, the Ukrainian forces however claimed to have regained control of the city of Trostianets, in the northeast of the country, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called in his latest video on Saturday evening for the supply of more weapons, and questioned the inaction, in his eyes, of NATO.
“We need more weaponry. We must not only protect Ukraine but also the other countries of Eastern Europe, under the threat of a Russian invasion. We made that clear in our talks with our American counterparts in Poland,” he said. “What does NATO do? Is it led by Russia? What are they waiting for? “, he criticized.
“Congratulations” from Putin
President Putin on Sunday congratulated in a video address the National Guard (Rosgvardia) which he created six years ago, and particularly those who participate in “the special military operation on the territory of Donbass and Ukraine”. .
“Yes, a real combat situation is associated with an increased risk,” he added, saying: “Our entire vast country is rightly proud of each of you,” he said.
A little more than a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Russian command created a surprise on Friday by announcing “to concentrate the bulk of the efforts on the main objective: the liberation” of the mining basin of the Donbass, contrasting with the will displayed by Moscow until then to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine” as a whole and not only in this eastern region where there are two pro-Russian separatist “republics”.
The Ukrainian army assures, in the last bulletin of its staff published Sunday at dawn, that in the Donbass, in the areas of Donetsk and Lugansk, “seven enemy attacks were repelled” and eight Russian tanks destroyed.
The Ukrainian authorities also announced on Saturday a series of Russian strikes on fuel depots, which left five injured in Lviv, a large city in western Ukraine relatively spared from the fighting for the moment.
For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed on Sunday these strikes near Lviv carried out with high-precision long-range air weapons which destroyed a large fuel base used by Ukrainian troops. Also in Lviv, missiles destroyed the military radio repair factory workshops.
The Russian ministry also announced the destruction of a missile depot in a village 30 km southwest of kyiv.
In kyiv, “enemy sabotage groups are still trying to penetrate” the city, according to the Ukrainian General Staff in its latest bulletin. An anti-aircraft alert was triggered on kyiv, and in several other cities in the night from Saturday to Sunday, and the inhabitants called on to take shelter.
However, it is very difficult to independently verify what is happening in the theater of operations.
Referendum in Lugansk?
The separatist territory of Lugansk, whose independence Moscow has recognized, could soon hold a referendum to join Russia, the territory’s leader, Leonid Passechnik, said on Sunday.
“I think that in the near future a referendum will be held on the territory of the (self-proclaimed Lugansk, editor’s note) republic, during which the people will exercise their absolute constitutional right and express their opinion on joining the Russian Federation “, he said, quoted by the Russian agencies.
According to Ukrainian regional authorities, the Russian army took control of the town of Slavutitch, where the personnel of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant reside, briefly arresting the mayor and sparking pro-Ukrainian demonstrations.
“There has been no employee rotation for almost a week”, since March 20, at the Chernobyl site, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement. worrying about the ability of employees who manage day-to-day operations to go home to rest.