Donald Trump launched a lapidary on Thursday “Vladimir, stop!” To his Russian counterpart, after a new wave of massive strikes on Ukraine who left at least 12 dead and dozens of injured in kyiv when the laborious negotiations undertaken by the American president have tense on the issue of Crimea.
The salvo of strikes launched by Russia in the night – 70 missiles and 145 drones according to kyiv – has targeted six Ukrainian regions and several cities, including kyiv, where witnesses have described apocalyptic scenes in a residential area, Eventured buildings and lifeless bodies in the streets.
The balance sheet in the capital alone, one of the heaviest for months, is likely to increase as the bodies are removed from the rubble. There are 90 injured, according to a last assessment of the emergency services.
“Russia wants to destroy us,” said on the scene of the Olena Davydiouk strike, a 33 -year -old lawyer living very close to the impact of Russian missiles. Still in shock, she says she was woken up by the strike, saying that “the windows shattered, the doors were torn off from their hinges”.
London denounced a “bloodbath perpetrated by Putin” and new “shocking” scenes, the European Union (EU) saw proof that the Kremlin was “the main obstacle to peace”, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, immediately shorted his visit to South Africa.
“Vladimir, stop!” », On the other hand, annoyed Donald Trump in one of his lapidary formulas on his social social platform, adding that he was” not happy “with this wave of strikes to” very bad timing ».
The wave of explosive missiles and drones launched by Russia comes at a critical time for the negotiation process that Donald Trump promised to end up to end the war launched by Moscow in February 2022, whose assessment was at least tens of thousands of deaths on both sides.
Negotiations between the United States, Ukraine and its French and British European allies, planned at the ministerial level in London on Wednesday, were canceled at the last minute, after press information reported Russian-American discussions on the recognition of the annexation by Russia of Crimea, Ukrainian peninsula of which Moscow took control in 2014.
The Kremlin “completely” agrees with Trump
“There is nothing to discuss […] This is our territory, ”decided Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday.
Donald Trump then attacked him violently, accusing him of making “incendiary” remarks when an agreement with Russia was “very close”. He stressed that for Ukraine Crimea was “lost”, receiving a satisfaction from the Kremlin on Thursday which stressed being “completely” agree with this observation.
The Ukrainian president returned to the subject Thursday before leaving Pretoria hurriedly: “We do everything that our partners have proposed, except what is contrary to our legislation and the Ukrainian constitution on the territorial integrity of the country, understood, he stressed, demanding,” more pressure on Russia “.
kyiv received unconditional support from the European Union on this point: the EU will never recognize the peninsula as Russian, “Crimea is Ukraine,” hammered the head of European diplomacy Kaja Kallas on Wednesday.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, joined this refusal to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea on Thursday. There is a “factual situation,” he said. “However, should we give discharge [à la Russie] ? No “. The question of the status of the peninsula is “in any case not now, and it is not up to us to do so,” he added.
“The nervousness of the Americans must only focus on one person: President Putin,” he said, on the sidelines of a visit to Madagascar, saying that the Russian president had to stop “lying” by saying wanting peace.
“There were children, it was terrible”
In kyiv Thursday morning, a woman with a bloody face was taken care of by the firefighters, tightening her little dog trembling in her arms. Another, in shock, covered his mouth with his hands. On the grass strewn with rubble, people were crying a dead man, deposited there by the rescuers.
Anna Balamout, 36, told her “frightening” race in the middle of the night, with her two children, in the middle of the “waves” of explosions, to reach an anti -aircraft shelter.
“People were running, covered with blood. They were screaming, there were children, it was terrible, “she told AFP.
The explosions followed one another in the night, while the lights of drone blasts and missiles lit up the horizon of the Ukrainian capital, according to AFP journalists on the spot.
The Russian armed forces “led a massive attack with long-range precision weapons” against several companies linked to the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
