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 Monday, December 9, 2024, the 1020th day of the war.
Fact of the day
While receiving Friedrich Merz, favorite in the German legislative elections, this Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded “stronger actions” in his support for kyiv. Ukraine has in fact been asking Berlin for months to deliver long-range Taurus cruise missiles, but the current Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz still refuses for fear of an escalation with Russia.
“We are counting on stronger and more decisive actions from Germany, from you personally,” insisted Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president notably said he “hopes” for a decision from Berlin to “increase” kyiv’s “long-range” capabilities, a thinly veiled allusion to the Taurus missiles.
For his part, Friedrich Merz has not closed the door, far from it. He reiterated his desire to provide these weapons to kyiv, while emphasizing that they should be used, on Russian territory, only against military targets. “We want to allow your army to reach the military bases in Russia, not the civilian population, not the infrastructure,” insisted Friedrich Merz.
The Taurus missile has a range of 500 km, greater than that of the American Atacms ballistic missiles and the Franco-British Storm Shadow / Scalp cruise missiles that Ukraine currently has.
Today’s statement
« “I think President Putin doesn’t really understand what nuclear weapons mean to human beings, what kind of weapon are they? I don’t think he even thought about it.” »
The words are signed Terumi Tanaka, co-president of the Japanese association of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nihon Hidankyo association will formally receive the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to it on Tuesday in October. She continues her fight against nuclear weapons, almost 80 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Mr. Putin, we want to tell you that nuclear weapons must never be used. It is an act that would go against humanity,” added the co-president of the association.
Vladimir Putin, who regularly threatens the use of nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine, recently modified the decree expanding the possibilities of using them. Russia is ready to use “all means” possible to defend itself, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated last Thursday.
The number of the day
1,5 million. This is the number of active duty soldiers available to European NATO states (excluding Türkiye). This is more than the 1.1 million in the Russian army, according to the strategic institute Military Balance. But for NATO to be able, according to its plans, to deploy 100,000 soldiers in 10 days, they must significantly increase their level of preparation, experts agree.
“If we add up the capabilities of each country, whether financial, industrial or military, there is no reason why Europe should not be able to cope,” the Chief of Staff recently judged. of the French armies, General Thierry Burkhard. For Nick Witney, expert at the European Council on International Relations (ECFR), Europeans can get by without the United States but they “must get rid of this feeling of total dependence”, which has long been “very practical” to devote fewer resources for their defense.
NATO Europeans have nearly 1,900 combat tanks and 2,000 combat aircraft, or two thirds of Washington’s resources, Military Balance calculates. They also have around 500 self-propelled artillery guns, while the United States has 671, and they have ordered 1,100 additional systems since the invasion of Ukraine.
The trend
“People are freezing. So we try to restore everything as soon as possible and at least provide them with heat,” explains Dmytro, 41 years old and an engineer in a thermal power station badly damaged by a bombing. Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks, plunging hundreds of thousands of people into darkness as winter sets in with its share of frost and flakes.
According to kyiv, these attacks aim to paralyze its energy network and undermine the morale of Ukrainians throughout the winter. If Moscow has admitted hitting its neighbor’s energy infrastructure, it claims that these are legitimate targets because they “support Ukrainian defense industry companies”.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
According to DTEK, the Ukrainian energy supplier, its power plants have been attacked nearly 200 times since the invasion began in 2022, with strikes that damaged around 90% of their production capacity. In total, after almost three years of incessant attack, three of their workers were killed and 56 others injured.
