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 part of this Friday, on the 989th day of the conflict.
Fact of the day
Since the election of Donald Trump on Tuesday, a wind of “peace” has been blowing across Europe. With a new burst, propagated by Viktor Orbán, a Hungarian Prime Minister who is both a Russophile and on good terms with the elected American president, and a supporter of a cease-fire in Ukraine. Very happy to have succeeded in bringing together European leaders in Budapest, the one whose country also presides over the European Union for another two months, took the opportunity to defend his line, identical to that developed by the Russians since Tuesday.
“The situation on the battlefield is obvious, it is a military defeat” for Ukraine, Viktor Orbán said on Hungarian radio. Donald Trump “hates war” and therefore, “for us Europeans, the situation is evolving”, he added, adding that only one solution was now required: “Let us adapt quickly and move from war to peace “.
Other countries immediately rushed to reassure Volodymyr Zelensky. Notably French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk who released a joint statement in which they reaffirmed their “determination to provide unwavering support to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people”.
“The Allies are more determined than ever to support Ukraine for as long as it takes for it to prevail,” NATO also clarified.
Sentence of the day
« We delivered letters from Ukrainian relatives to Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia. » »
This not-so-innocuous statement comes from Dmytro Loubinets, the Ukrainian human rights ombudsman. For the first time since January 2023, he met his Russian counterpart Tatiana Moskalkova this Friday. On almost neutral ground, in Belarus. This meeting coincides with the announcement of the repatriation of the bodies of 563 Ukrainian soldiers who died in Russia. “Three hundred and twenty bodies of defenders killed in the Donetsk sector and 89 soldiers who fell in the Bakhmout sector were repatriated. We also managed to repatriate 154 bodies from morgues in Russia,” said the Ukrainian coordinating organization for prisoners of war.
A 91-year-old woman living in Ukraine was also repatriated to Russia, to her family, on the sidelines of the meeting of mediators who also reportedly exchanged lists of prisoners.
The number of the day
6. The number of years in prison in “a penal colony”, requested this Friday before a Moscow court against a 68-year-old Russian pediatrician. Nadezhda Buïanova is accused of having criticized, during a private conversation in her office, the Russian “special operation” in Ukraine. She was denounced by the mother of one of her little patients, the widow of a Russian soldier killed at the front. The child even came to testify at the hearing to the “truthfulness” of the remarks denounced by his mother.
This case illustrates the ruthless repression targeting critical voices, real or supposed, of the war in Ukraine. Arrests for espionage, treason, sabotage, extremism or for simple criticism of the army are increasing, with the result of very heavy prison sentences for the accused, often victims of denunciations.
Today's trend
Volodymyr Zelensky repeated this Thursday that 11,0000 North Korean soldiers are fighting alongside Russian troops in the Kursk region, even announcing that they have suffered their first “losses”.
But the Kremlin continues to kick in over these somewhat embarrassing reinforcements. Asked about the subject this Friday, his Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov referred the question to the Ministry of Defense, which in principle never responds to requests from Western journalists. Already on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told him not to rule out joint military exercises with North Korea. “We will see, we will be able to organize exercises. Why not ? “, he declared, evasively, during a forum.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
The presence of Kim Jong-un's soldiers on European soil, however, is at the center of Western concerns, who are also using it as an argument to convince Donald Trump to continue to support NATO. The Atlantic Alliance also gave another layer this Friday. Along with its Asian partners – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – it “strongly” condemned North Korea’s engagement with Russia. “The deployment of thousands of fighters constitutes a dangerous intensification of the already substantial support provided by this country to the war of aggression that Russia is waging, completely illegally, against Ukraine,” NATO said.
