War in Ukraine, Day 498 | “We need honesty in our relations” with NATO, argues Zelensky

(Prague) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Kyiv wants “honesty” in its relations with NATO, days before a crucial Atlantic Alliance summit in Lithuania and the evening of a strike murderous Russian in Lviv condemned by UNESCO.

Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Prague after a visit Thursday to Bulgaria to discuss NATO membership and to plead for an acceleration of the delivery of weapons by this major ammunition-producing country, in the midst of the Kyiv counter-offensive.

“We need honesty in our relations” with NATO, Volodymyr Zelensky told the press in Prague alongside Czech President Petr Pavel. It is time to demonstrate “the courage and strength of this alliance”, he added.

Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted Ukraine to receive a “clear signal” that it would join NATO. “Ukraine has not received an invitation in one form or another,” Zelensky said. “I think it is necessary to demonstrate the strength and unity of the Alliance,” he added.

The Allies are still seeking a common line on the security guarantees they are ready to grant Kyiv as well as on the invitation to Ukraine to eventually join NATO.

Regarding the Ukrainian counter-offensive, he admitted that it was “not fast” but that the Kyiv troops were advancing.

“The offense is not fast, that’s a fact,” he admitted. “But nevertheless, we are advancing, we are not retreating like the Russians,” the Ukrainian president told reporters in Prague. “We now have the initiative.”

Friday in Türkiye

Ukraine’s president will also travel to Istanbul on Friday for talks with Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as Moscow threatens to pull out of the Turkey-sponsored Ukrainian grain export deal.

For his part, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko assured Thursday that the sulphurous boss of the Wagner group, Evgueni Prigojine, was in Russia, despite the agreement reached after his aborted rebellion which provided for him to go into exile in Belarus.

According to him, Wagner’s fighters are also “in their permanent camps” in eastern Ukraine and not in Belarus, “for the moment”.

Meanwhile on the ground in Ukraine, overnight Wednesday-Thursday was marked by a Russian strike on Lviv, a major western city rarely targeted, which killed seven people, in the most destructive attack on this region. since the start of the war, according to the authorities.

“This attack, the first in an area protected by the World Heritage Convention since the start of the war on February 24, 2022, is a violation of this convention” of UNESCO, reacted Thursday the UN organization based in Paris. A historic building listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site was hit.

The salvo of Russian missiles that hit Lviv overnight damaged more than 30 apartment buildings and other buildings, according to local authorities.

“This is the most destructive attack against the civilian population of the Lviv region since the beginning of the war,” the head of the regional military administration, Maksym Kozytsky, noted on Telegram.

At least seven people were killed and more than 30 injured, according to the Interior Ministry.

“I woke up from the first explosion, but we didn’t have time to leave the apartment. There was a second explosion, the ceiling started to fall,” Olya, a resident, told AFP.

” My mother is dead ”

“My mother is dead, my neighbors are dead. At this point, it looks like I’m the only one who survived on the fourth floor,” she added.

The Russian army claimed to have targeted sites of “temporary deployment” of Ukrainian soldiers. “All designated facilities have been affected,” the Ministry of Defense said.

Nearly a month after the start of the counter-offensive aimed at driving Russian forces out of national territory, the Ukrainian general staff claimed progress “in certain places” around the devastated city of Bakhmout.

At the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, occupied by the Russian army in southern Ukraine, “tensions are decreasing”, on the other hand, Natalia Goumeniouk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian army for the southern front, reported on Thursday.

Moscow and Kyiv had been accusing each other for several days of an imminent provocation in this nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.