Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening. Between the strong declarations, the progress on the front and the results of the fighting, here is the main thing from this Wednesday, on the 987th day of the conflict.
Fact of the day
Volodymyr Zelensky was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on Tuesday morning on his “impressive victory.” Difficult to do less, as the fate of Ukraine and its means of continuing the war against Russia depend on this man who boasted of being able to resolve the conflict “in 24 hours” and plans to reduce the spending devoted to his countries in NATO.
Overall, the victory of the American billionaire plunged Ukrainians into anguish. “There will be no more American support,” worries Natalia, a fifty-year-old encountered in the streets of kyiv and who refers to the tens of billions of dollars in military and financial aid that Washington and NATO members have supplied since the start of the war in 2022.
President Zelensky is therefore walking on eggshells. He said he hoped Trump's victory would help Ukraine achieve “a just peace.” In other words, not on the conditions already decreed by Moscow and which it considers a surrender. “I appreciate President Trump's commitment to the 'peace through strength' approach to world affairs,” he wrote, cautiously, on X.
Sentence of the day
« We have repeatedly said that the United States is capable of bringing this conflict to an end” and Donald Trump will be judged “on concrete actions.” »
This is the cryptic reaction of Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, to the election of Donald Trump. “It is practically impossible for relations to deteriorate further” with the United States, “they are at their lowest historical level. As for what happens, everything will depend on the American leaders,” he said, adding that Vladimir Putin had not planned to congratulate the president-elect of the United States. “Let us not forget that we are talking about a hostile country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state. »
The number of the day
22. The number of years in prison received by a Russian, convicted on appeal for having, according to the Russian security services (FSB), “attempted to sabotage a railway line” in the south of the country after having been “recruited” by the Ukrainian services. Alexandre Dimitrenko, 32, was “arrested at his home” in May 2022 when he had “extracted an explosive device from a cache”, 500 kilometers south of Moscow, according to the FSB press release. “He had planned to plant this explosive under the railway tracks” in the Voronezh region, bordering Ukraine, continue the Russian security services.
Cases for “sabotage”, “treason” or “terrorism” are increasing in Russia. Already on Tuesday, another man was sentenced to twelve years in prison for attempting to sabotage electrical cabinets on the Russian railway network.
Today's trend
Far from Washington and Florida, hostilities continue on the ground where the Ukrainians continue to lose ground on the eastern front. This Tuesday, Moscow claimed the capture of Antonivka and Maksimivka, two villages located south of Kourakhové, and north of Vougledar, a Ukrainian fortress that fell in early October. Russian troops have been approaching for several weeks from the east and south of Kourakhové, a city which had around 18,000 inhabitants before the conflict, and which is notably home to a large deposit of lithium, a rare mineral, nearby. The Russian army is currently at the gates of the eastern suburbs of this city, located near a reservoir.
More accustomed to striking in the Black Sea, the Ukrainians also hold their feat of arms of the day in the Caspian Sea, 1,500 kilometers from their border. They announced that they had carried out a first successful strike on Russian ships, using aerial explosive drones.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
This attack would have hit the missile ships Tatarstan et Dagestan anchoring off the town of Kaspiysk, in the Russian Caucasus. But local Russian authorities have not confirmed that any ships suffered damage, saying only that a Ukrainian drone was shot down.
