NATO, led by the United States, promised Thursday unwavering long-term support for Ukraine, which, while having regained possession of a strategic island for the control of maritime routes, is in a very perilous situation in the face of Russians in a key eastern city.
“We will stand with Ukraine and the entire Alliance will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes to ensure that it is not defeated by Russia,” said Joe Biden at the end of the meeting. a NATO summit in Madrid.
“I don’t know how or when it will end,” added the American president, affirming however: “It will not end with a defeat for Ukraine”.
“The Iron Curtain, in fact, is already coming down,” commented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov from Minsk, taking up this image born with the Cold War and which was quickly fell into disuse after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
“This iron curtain is erected today by the Westerners themselves,” added his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei, whose country is an ally of Moscow in its confrontation with the West.
Accusations of “imperialism”
These two officials were reacting to the strategic roadmap that the Atlantic Alliance had just adopted and which now designates Russia as being “the most significant and direct threat to the security of the allies”. And this while denouncing the attempts of Moscow and Beijing to unite their efforts to “destabilize the international order”.
Several NATO member states have announced new military aid to Ukraine: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged an extension of one billion pounds (1.16 billion euros), Joe Biden on $800 million more.
At the same time, the US Treasury has made public the freezing of assets in excess of a billion dollars of a company based in the United States and controlled by the Russian oligarch and politician Suleiman Kerimov, already sanctioned by Washington.
As for French President Emmanuel Macron, he has planned the revision of his country’s military programming, stressing that “we must now, entering a period of war, know how to produce certain types of equipment faster, stronger”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his part considered “ridiculous” the accusation of President Vladimir Putin who had affirmed Wednesday evening that the Atlantic Alliance had “imperialist ambitions” with regard to Russia.
“It is rather Putin who has made imperialism the goal of his policy” by saying that the neighboring countries were “part of his country”, added Mr. Scholz, who now wants to make the German army the first conventional army in Europe.
China, a wary ally of Moscow and cautious in the Ukraine crisis, has simply declared that NATO, which has described Beijing as a “challenge” to its interests and security, “is stubborn […] to smear Chinese foreign policy”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is trying to keep in touch with the two parties and to mediate, for his part called for “intensifying efforts” for a ceasefire.
A symbolic victory
But for the time being, on the ground, it is a victory of great symbolic significance recorded by the Ukrainians with the departure of the Russian forces from Serpents’ Island, which they had taken in the early hours of their offense.
The Russian army claimed to be withdrawing “as a sign of goodwill”, its objectives having been “achieved” and to facilitate the export of Ukrainian grain from Ukraine through the Black Sea.
This militarized islet is located southwest of Odessa, the largest Ukrainian port where millions of tons of grain have been collected, and facing the mouth of the Danube.
The version of the Ukrainian military is radically different: the Russians abandoned Serpents’ Island because they found themselves “unable to withstand the fire of our artillery, our missiles and our air strikes”.
“The enemy fled in two speedboats”, leaving “on fire” this islet where “explosions are still heard”, they said again, specifying that they were now going to restore “direct physical control” there. .
“Serpents Island is a strategic point and this considerably changes the situation in the Black Sea […]. This still does not guarantee that the enemy will not return. But this already considerably limits the actions of the occupants, ”said President Voldymyr Zelensky in the evening.
The authorities installed by the Russians in the south of Ukraine for their part announced Thursday the departure of a ship loaded with 7000 tons of Ukrainian cereals from the port of Berdiansk, passed under Russian control.
Ukraine has been accusing Russia for weeks of stealing its wheat harvests in the occupied regions to resell it illegally on the international market.
Receiving in Moscow his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo, whose country is currently presiding over the G20, Vladimir Putin again swore on Thursday that Russia was not “obstructing the export of Ukrainian wheat” and blamed Western sanctions restrictions on Russian exports of fertilizers and food products.
The Indonesian head of state announced that he had given Mr. Putin a message from Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Battle of Lysychansk
In contrast to the Ukrainian success on Serpents’ Island, the situation in Lyssychansk, a city in the industrial basin of Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine where most of the fighting is concentrated, “remains extremely difficult” , President Zelensky acknowledged on Thursday.
The “very powerful” bombardments make it impossible to evacuate civilians, regional governor Serguiï Gaïdaï had recently deplored, estimating that there are still 15,000 civilians there.
However, he denied allegations by pro-Russian separatists fighting alongside Moscow forces, who said Thursday they control half of this city, located on the other side of a river facing that of Severodonetsk, conquered last week by the Russian army.
But the number 2 of the general staff, Oleksiï Gromov, told reporters on Thursday that the Ukrainian forces had “no intention of retreating”.
“We have no more electricity or gas, and it’s already been three months,” testified to AFP a resident of Seversk, about twenty kilometers away.
“It bombs day and night,” said another.
Lyssytchansk is the last major city not yet in Russian hands in the Lugansk region, one of the two provinces of Donbass, which Moscow intends to fully control.
Near Dnipro, in central-eastern Ukraine, a bombardment also hit an agricultural company, destroying 40 tonnes of corn, according to regional authorities.