The war continues, on the ground and on the diplomatic front. Russia continued to shell eastern Ukraine on Saturday May 21 and claimed to have destroyed a stockpile of weapons delivered by the West. At the same time, US President Joe Biden signed the law providing a massive $40 billion in new aid to Kyiv. Franceinfo summarizes the highlights of the day.
Russian strikes across the country
On the ground, after failing to take control of kyiv and its region at the end of February and in March, Russian troops are concentrating their efforts in an offensive against eastern Ukraine, where the fighting is intense. Seven civilians were killed and 10 injured on Saturday in the Donetsk region, according to the local Ukrainian governor. Further north, the governor of the Kharkiv region said that localities around this city had been targeted by numerous artillery fire in the past 24 hours, which left one dead and 20 injured.
The rest of the country remains targeted. Russia claimed to have struck a large stockpile of weapons supplied in northwestern Ukraine “by the United States and European countries”. cruise missiles, “launched from the sea”hit the mark “near Malin station, Zhytomyr region”, 110 km from kyiv, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. It was not possible to verify this information from an independent source.
Even further west, in Rivne, a Russian missile targeted a “military infrastructure” in the city, according to the regional governor. Close to the Polish border, this city has very rarely been attacked since the beginning of the conflict.
A step towards an exchange of Mariupol prisoners?
In the martyr city of Mariupol (southeast), nearly 2,500 men from the Ukrainian forces have taken themselves prisoner this week, according to the Russians. These resisters “will be taken home”, promised Volodymyr Zelensky, referring to ongoing discussions with France, Turkey and Switzerland on this subject, without further details. kyiv rejects the term surrender, citing an operation aimed at “rescue our heroes” and their exchange for Russian prisoners.
Russia will study the possibility of exchanging fighters from the Ukrainian Azov regiment taken prisoner for Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, said Russian deputy and negotiator Leonid Slutsky on Saturday.
Biden greenlights $40 billion package
The American president signed the law adopted Thursday by Congress providing a gigantic envelope of 40 billion dollars in support of Ukraine, in particular for its war effort. The law notably includes six billion dollars to enable Ukraine to equip itself with armored vehicles and strengthen its anti-aircraft defence. His Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, welcomed the release of aid “today more necessary than ever”. During the day, he repeated that Ukraine had at this stage above all “need armor”.
Nearly 1,000 Americans barred from entering Russia
Joe Biden, Mark Zuckerberg, Morgan Freeman … Russian diplomacy published on Saturday a list of 963 American personalities banned from entering Russia, in retaliation for similar sanctions imposed by Washington since the offensive in Ukraine. On its website, the Russian Foreign Ministry has made this document public, which mainly includes government officials, parliamentarians, but also members of civil society.
Moscow had already announced these sanctions against many of the personalities present in the list, in particular the American president, his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, or the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg. The list also includes Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, who had not been publicly sanctioned until now. Russian diplomacy accuses him of having recorded, in 2017, a video in which he claimed that Russia was carrying out a “conspiracy” against the United States.
Finland in turn deprived of Russian gas
Finland, a member of the European Union, saw its supply of Russian gas cut on Saturday by the giant Gazprom, which argues that Helsinki refused its new conditions of having to pay it in rubles. The Finnish company Gasum assured that it could obtain gas from other suppliers and continue “normally” his activities.
The Nordic country, already deprived since mid-May of its imports of Russian electricity, has angered Moscow, like Sweden, by deciding to apply for NATO membership. Finland thus joins Poland and Bulgaria among the countries to which Gazprom cut gas because they refused to pay in rubles, as it demanded in April.