Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening. Between the strong declarations, the advances on the front and the results of the fighting, here is the essential part of this Thursday, December 5, 2024, the 1,016th day of the war.
Fact of the day
Diplomatic theater or real escalation? This Thursday, all eyes were on the island of Malta which hosted a summit of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) – an institution created during the Cold War to maintain a channel of East-West communication . While peace negotiations could emerge after the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, this meeting achieved the feat of bringing together in the same place, for the first time since the start of the conflict, the heads of diplomacy Russian, Ukrainian and American. But hopes for relaxation and dialogue were quickly dashed, replaced by threats and invectives. Ukrainian Andriï Sybiga opened hostilities by calling his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov a “war criminal”. Not really moved, the person concerned activated the threat mode. He criticized Western countries for not paying attention to “the warnings” of Vladimir Putin, in particular by mentioning the possible commitment of troops in Ukraine to ensure the maintenance of Peace.
The American Antony Blinken ironically closed this dialogue of the deaf. “I regret that our colleague Mr. Lavrov left the room, not giving me the courtesy to listen to us as we listened to him. And of course, our Russian colleague is very good at drowning listeners under a tsunami of disinformation,” he retorted. “Let us not allow him or anyone else to deceive us. It is not and never has been a question of Russia's security, he added. This is Mr. Putin's imperial project to wipe Ukraine off the map.” Atmosphere…
Today's statement
« We are already mobilizing more people today than we can arm. » »
The unimpressive justification of a Ukrainian official for refusing the Biden administration's request to lower the age of mobilization of soldiers, an ultra-delicate subject in Ukraine.
For several weeks, the United States has been putting pressure on Ukraine to mobilize men aged 18 and over in order to fill the shortage of soldiers in the army which has been declining for months in the face of Russian troops. It is therefore a dismissal that the Ukrainian authorities are addressing, considering that the problems concerning mobilization are less serious than those caused by delays in Western aid.
At the beginning of the year, Ukraine lowered the minimum age for mobilization from 27 to 25, but refuses to go further as the country faces a dramatic demographic situation, particularly with the departure for millions of refugees, mainly women with children, live abroad.
The number of the day
20.000. The number of minors “deported or forcibly displaced” by Moscow since the start of the war, according to Volodymyr Zelensky. He criticized Thursday in kyiv the lack of help from international institutions in the return of Ukrainian prisoners held in Russia. “Are we currently receiving much help from organizations such as the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross to protect and ensure the return of Ukrainian prisoners held in Russia? Actually, no,” lamented the Ukrainian president. “We all see, in particular, how weak the world's reaction is to what Russia is doing to Ukrainian prisoners,” he continued.
Russia is holding thousands of soldiers taken prisoner, but also an unknown number of civilians. Moscow and kyiv regularly carry out prisoner exchanges, notably under Emirati mediation. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, 3,767 Ukrainians, civilians and soldiers, were released as part of these exchanges with Moscow. Some confided upon their return that they had been mistreated, even tortured.
Today's trend
This is the other first of the moment with the “meetings” in Malta, and more reassuring. The Russian chief of staff and his American counterpart spoke on the telephone last week in November, Moscow announced this Thursday, which Washington confirmed during the day. “On November 27, at the initiative of the Russian side, a telephone conversation took place” between Valeri Gerassimov and Charles Brown, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “During this exchange, the American side was informed of the holding of (military) exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean” by the Russian army, it is specified in the press release from the Russian ministry.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
According to American media, citing a spokesperson for Charles Brown, the two chiefs of staff also discussed the November 21 firing of a ballistic missile presented as hypersonic on a Ukrainian military factory by the Russian army. and experimental, capable of carrying a nuclear charge.
According to CNN, Valeri Guérassimov and Charles Brown also discussed the deployment of thousands of North Korean soldiers in support of Russian forces against the Ukrainian army, against a backdrop of rapprochement between Moscow and Pyongyang which greatly worries Washington and its South ally. Korean.