(Kyiv) The Ukrainian army is claiming progress on the northeastern front, with the recapture of several localities in the Kharkiv region, as a meeting of defense ministers from allied countries opens in Germany on Thursday to organize their support for Ukrainian military capabilities.
Updated yesterday at 9:42 p.m.
“This week we have good news from the Kharkiv region,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening video address broadcast on social media. Refusing to name them, he mentioned “localities where the Ukrainian flag has returned”.
Observers had reported in recent days of a breakthrough by Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region, without this information being verifiable from an independent source.
The Kharkiv region has been partly occupied by the Russian army since the start of the invasion on February 24. The city of the same name, the second largest in Ukraine, is regularly targeted by deadly bombardments, but the forces of Moscow have never managed to seize it.
PHOTO ANDRII MARIENKO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ukrainian firefighters try to put out a fire in the Kharkiv region.
On Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will host his counterparts from allied countries at the US base in Ramstein in western Germany to discuss the situation in Ukraine and organize support for Kyiv forces.
Ukraine has been waging a counter-offensive in the south of its territory since last week, and President Zelensky has repeatedly stated that he wants to take back “all regions under Russian occupation”, including Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014 .
“Forced transfers of children”
On Wednesday, before the UN Security Council, the UN Under-Secretary General for Human Rights, Ilze Brands, also reported “credible accusations” of “forcible transfers of children unaccompanied to the territory occupied by Russia or to the Russian Federation itself”.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to children who are not in the care of their parents, and that these children are eligible for adoption by Russian families,” said she added.
The United States, which initiated the Security Council meeting with Albania, on Wednesday accused the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin of directly organizing the forced displacement of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia.
TASS HOST AGENCY PHOTO BY REUTERS
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Operations carried out “as part of its efforts to annex parts of the territories of Ukraine under its control”, estimated a deputy spokesman for American diplomacy.
The Russian ambassador to the UN Vassili Nebenzia rejected all these “unfounded” accusations, which he described as “legendary”.
In Moscow, the party of Vladimir Putin, United Russia, proposed to organize referendums on November 4 in the territories under Russian control in Ukraine, with a view to attaching them to Russia.
Gas: new EU-Russia tensions
Tension rose again on Wednesday between Moscow and the EU over Russian gas deliveries, with Vladimir Putin threatening to cease all deliveries of hydrocarbons in the event of a price cap, a project relaunched the same day by Brussels.
PHOTO KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Capping the prices of Russian hydrocarbons would be “a foolishness”, he said during an economic forum in Vladivostok (Russian Far East).
“We will not deliver anything at all if it is against our interests, in this case economic. No gas, no oil, no coal […]. Nothing,” added the Russian president.
For the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, such a cap, which is part of measures intended to reduce the energy bill of Europeans, would also make it possible to “reduce the income” used by the Russian authorities to “finance this war atrocious against Ukraine”.
“At the beginning of the war, Russian gas by pipeline represented 40% of all the gas imported (by the EU). Today, it represents only 9%”, underlined Mr.me von der Leyen.
In his speech, Vladimir Putin also attacked the “sanctions fever” of the West, which according to him will not succeed in “isolating Russia”.
He insisted on strengthening ties with Asia, China in particular, in the face of “the technological, financial and economic aggression of the West”.
Mr. Putin also said that Ukrainian grain exports went mainly to European countries and not to poor countries, which, according to him, creates a risk of “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Ukraine on Wednesday refuted these accusations, retorting that two-thirds of deliveries were going to countries in Africa and Asia.
Fears around the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant, occupied for six months by Russian forces, also continue to remain strong.
IAEA PHOTO, VIA REUTERS
Damage to the reactor core would have “consequences not only for Ukraine, but also, clearly, consequences beyond borders”, warned Wednesday Oleg Korikov, head of the Ukrainian nuclear safety agency.
In a statement, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Wednesday evening that “new bombardments damaged an emergency power line” of this plant, “without immediate impact on the current operations” of this complex of six reactors.
A nuclear accident would have “consequences not only for Ukraine, but also, clearly, consequences beyond the borders”, warned Oleg Korikov, the head of the Ukrainian nuclear safety agency.
Largest nuclear power plant in Europe, Zaporijjia suffered strikes of which Kyiv and Moscow accused each other.
The boss of the Ukrainian public operator Energoatom, Petro Kotin, hoped on Wednesday that this plant be placed under the protection of a “peacekeeping contingent”.