The Mirage 2000-5 combat aircraft that Paris intends to supply to Ukraine will be delivered “in the first quarter of 2025”, French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, announced on Tuesday.
The planes must first be equipped with “new equipment”.
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War in Ukraine: after two and a half years of war, incursion into Russian territory
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RUSSIAN OFFICIAL SANCTIONED BY LONDON
The United Kingdom has sanctioned General Igor Kirillov, in charge of radioactive, chemical and biological substances in the Russian army, as well as his entire unit, “for the deployment of barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine “.
“The United Kingdom denounces Russia’s flagrant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and urges Russia to immediately cease any such activity,” the Foreign Office statement added.
RÉUNION BIDEN-MACRON-SCHOLZ-STARMER
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will receive American Presidents Joe Biden, French Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday morning in Berlin to take stock of the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East, said Tuesday a German government source.
This meeting will take place as part of Joe Biden’s visit to Germany where he is expected from Thursday evening. The leaders are then scheduled to attend a meeting of Ukraine’s allies on Saturday afternoon at the US military base at Ramstein in southwest Germany.
RUSSIAN NEWS
The Russian army claimed Tuesday the capture of two new villages in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces have been encroaching on ground for weeks, in particular gradually approaching the strategic town of Pokrovsk.
“The units of the Southern group continued to advance (…) liberating the locality of Zoryane”, in the Donetsk region, the Russian army said in a press release. Furthermore, “the units of the Vostok group improved their tactical situation, by liberating the locality of Zolota Nyva”, in the same region, according to the same source.
ONE DEATH IN STRIKE IN ODESSA
A Ukrainian was killed and five foreigners were injured in a Russian missile strike on the Black Sea port of Odessa that hit a civilian boat, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The missile attack took place Monday evening, hitting a boat flying the flag of Palau, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement. A 60-year-old employee of a logistics company was killed and five foreigners, members of the boat’s crew, were injured, added the prosecution, which did not specify the nationality of the injured.
FRENCH MIRAGES DELIVERED “IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2025”
The Mirage 2000-5 combat planes that Paris intends to supply to Ukraine will be delivered “in the first quarter of 2025”, the time to modify the aircraft and train pilots and mechanics, announced Tuesday the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu.
The number of aircraft currently in service with the French Air Force has not been specified. Equipped for air combat, the Mirage 2000-5s which will fly in Ukrainian colors must first be equipped with “new equipment”, affirms the minister on airstrikes and “anti-electronic warfare defense” operations to resist powerful Russian jamming, he specifies.
NORTH KOREAN SOLDIERS IN UKRAINE?
North Korean soldiers were most likely killed in Ukraine after being sent there to help Russia, South Korea’s new defense minister said Tuesday. “We assess it as very likely that there were casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine, given various circumstances,” Kim Yong-hyun said during a parliamentary hearing.
A Ukrainian media outlet claimed this weekend that six North Korean officers died in a Ukrainian missile attack on Thursday near Donetsk, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. Seoul also expects Pyongyang to send more soldiers to the Ukrainian front to support its Russian ally, which launched a military operation on February 24, 2022.
Hello everyone, welcome to this live. We will follow together the latest news on the war in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army claimed Monday to have struck during the night “the largest” oil terminal in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, and a civilian ship was hit by a Russian ballistic missile in the port of Odessa, causing one dead, according to kyiv. Ukraine has been struggling on the Eastern Front for more than a year and has seen Russian forces inexorably approaching the city of Pokrovsk, an important logistics node for the Ukrainian army.
As a sign of this progress, the Russian army announced on Monday that it had captured the village of Grodivka, a town located about ten kilometers east of Pokrovsk. Last week, it was the Ukrainian fortress of Vougledar which fell, at the junction of the Eastern and Southern fronts. The Ukrainian army, for its part, claimed to have struck an oil terminal in Feodosia, in eastern Crimea, the “largest” on this peninsula and which supplies the Russian army in particular, according to kyiv.
Russian authorities confirmed a fire at the oil site, without naming the cause. Online videos show at least two large columns of black smoke rising into the sky. In the evening, it was Russia which struck the port of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, notably hitting a civilian ship flying the flag of Palau, according to the regional governor, Oleg Kiper. “A 60-year-old Ukrainian, employee of a private handling company, was killed. Five other foreign nationals were injured”he said on Telegram.
