War in Ukraine, day 724 | Zelensky calls for long-range weapons

(Munich and Kyiv) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday made an urgent appeal to his Western allies to deliver more military equipment to the country, emphasizing long-range weapons, after one of Russia’s most successful victories. more significant in eastern Ukraine.

If the leader was stunned by the forced withdrawal of the army, announced overnight, from the Ukrainian town of Avdiïvka, he did not let anything show during his intervention on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, in Germany.

But his message is clear: “our actions are limited only by the quantity and scope of the range of our forces – which does not depend on us,” he told the leaders gathered for this high mass. of world diplomacy, as Ukraine enters its third year of war.

“We can get our land back. And Putin may lose. This has already happened more than once on the battlefield,” he argued.

He lamented that Ukraine was “kept in an artificial weapons deficit, particularly artillery and long-range capabilities.” This lack “allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war.”

Kyiv has been asking its allies for months for long-range weapons capable of hitting Russian troops more deeply.

A problem that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz carefully avoided on Saturday. “Step by step, we always decide the right thing to do at the right time,” he replied, meaning that the delivery of these weapons was not on the agenda.

Harris-Zelensky reunion

Kyiv wants Berlin to equip it with Taurus, one of the German Air Force’s most modern and effective missiles.

The German government is reluctant, for fear that Russian territory would also be affected by these precision weapons, potentially leading to an escalation of the conflict.

Olaf Scholz recalled that Germany – the second largest contributor in absolute value after the United States – was a key supporter of Ukraine’s defense and had just proven it again by signing, on Friday, a bilateral security agreement anchoring in the duration of aid to Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky signed a similar document with France, during a trip to Paris, where Emmanuel Macron also promised Kyiv “up to three billion euros” in “additional” military aid this year.

Germany has planned seven billion in support for Ukraine for 2024, including a new package of arms deliveries worth 1.1 billion euros detailed on Friday.

But the situation is still blocked in the United States: Kyiv has been hoping for months for the vote on crucial aid of some 60 billion dollars decided by the government of Joe Biden and hampered by a Republican opposition under the influence of Donald Trump.

American Vice-President Kamala Harris tried to reassure Volodymyr Zelensky during interviews in Munich, where she had already met him two years ago, “five days before the Russian invasion”, she said. -she reminded.

“Political games”

On aid to Ukraine, “there is bipartisan support. […] we are unshakeable. And it has nothing to do with an electoral cycle,” said Mr.^me Harris who warned against “political games” in the middle of the campaign for the November presidential election in the United States.

The Ukrainian president described the pending American aid as “vital”.

His European tour was overshadowed by the announcement of the death in prison of Alexeï Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s number one opponent, further extinguishing any hope of openness in Moscow.

If Ukraine is once again at the heart of the debates at the Munich Conference, the deadly conflict between Israel and Hamas, the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip and the threat of escalation in the Middle East also occupy the participants.

Complex negotiations are underway for a truce including further releases of Hamas hostages and Palestinians held by Israel.

Qatar Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, whose country is one of the main mediators in negotiations for the release of the hostages, is due to speak on Saturday.

The army withdrew from Avdiïvka to “save lives”

The Ukrainian army withdrew from the eastern town of Avdiivka to spare its soldiers, handing Russia its biggest symbolic victory after Kyiv’s failed counter-offensive. last summer.

This decision was taken after months of intense fighting and intensifying attacks by Russian forces to conquer this city since last October, causing numerous losses and destruction.

Faced with a shortage of ammunition and outnumbered on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces announced their withdrawal during the night from Friday to Saturday.

The withdrawal from Avdiïvka was a “fair decision” to “save as many lives as possible”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared on Saturday from the podium of the Munich Security Conference.

“In order to avoid being surrounded, it was decided to withdraw to other lines. This does not mean that people moved back a few kilometers and Russia captured something, they did not capture anything,” he also said.

“In the situation where the enemy advances by walking over the corpses of its own soldiers and ten times more shells […] this is the only right decision,” declared Ukrainian General Oleksandr Tarnavsky, who commands this area, in a message published on the social network Telegram the night of Friday to Saturday.

The Ukrainian forces thus avoided encirclement, near this largely destroyed industrial city, he assured.

This is the first major decision by the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armies Oleksandr Syrsky since his appointment to this post on February 8. He justified it by the desire to “preserve” the lives of his soldiers.

“The right decision”

“I have decided to withdraw our units from the city and move on to defense on more favorable lines,” he wrote on Facebook.

“Our soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, they did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units and inflict significant losses on the enemy,” continued General Syrsky.

Before formalizing the abandonment of the city, General Tarnavsky had acknowledged that “several soldiers” of Ukraine had been “captured” by the Russian forces, who were “surplus in terms of manpower, artillery and aviation “.

A Ukrainian soldier deployed on the front in the east of the country told AFP that the withdrawal from Avdiïvka had become necessary.

“It was the right decision given the lack of weapons and artillery shells, because if we do not save the lives of the soldiers, we will soon have no one left to fight,” he said to AFP on condition of anonymity.

Avdiïvka, which had around 34,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion launched in February 2022, has an important symbolic value.

The city is now largely destroyed but some 900 civilians still remained there in recent days, according to local authorities. Moscow hopes that its capture will make Ukrainian bombings on the large neighboring city of Donetsk, the pro-Russian separatist capital in eastern Ukraine for ten years, more difficult.

Avdiïvka briefly fell in July 2014 into the hands of pro-Russian separatists led by Moscow, before returning to Ukrainian control and remaining so despite the invasion and its proximity to Donetsk.

According to Kyiv, the Russian army has been multiplying assault waves since October to take the city, despite very high human and material losses, a situation reminiscent of the battle of Bakhmut, a city that Moscow conquered in May 2023 after 10 months. fighting at the cost of tens of thousands of dead and wounded.

Furthermore, Russian authorities assured that they had foiled several Ukrainian drone attacks during the night from Friday to Saturday.

Zelensky ready to go with Trump to the front

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready on Saturday to take Donald Trump to the front of the war in Ukraine amid growing concerns about continued US aid to Kyiv if the Republican returned to the White House.

“I invited him publicly, but everything depends on his wishes,” declared the Ukrainian head of state at the podium of the Security Conference in Munich, in the south of Germany, which brings together the elite of geopolitics and global defense until Sunday.

“If Mr. Trump comes, I am ready to go to the front with him,” he continued.

“I think if we have a dialogue about how to end the war, we need to show decision-makers what real war means, not on Instagram,” he said.

Last July, Donald Trump said he would be able to end the conflict “in 24 hours” if he was re-elected in November.

During his four years as president, Mr. Trump had expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At a campaign rally this month, he said he would “encourage” even Russians to “do what they want” if a NATO member didn’t pay its bills, referring to spending defense.

Mr. Trump has so far led opinion polls in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but he faces several criminal charges that put him at risk of imprisonment.