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 of this Thursday, January 23, 2025, on the 1,065th day of the war.
News of the day
In the West, nothing new. At least that is the feeling of the Kremlin, which is playing quiet strength in the face of threats of sanctions and pressure from Donald Trump for a peace agreement to be negotiated quickly. After several days of silence, the spokesperson for the Russian presidency, Dmitri Peskov, said Thursday that he saw “nothing particularly new” in the American president’s first comments on the subject. Donald Trump, already in the White House from 2017 to 2021, “was the American president who most used these sanctions methods,” he stressed. “We remain ready for dialogue, for dialogue on an equal footing and with mutual respect,” he added, overplaying serenity in the face of the irritations of the American billionaire. “During his first presidency, there was such a dialogue between Putin and him,” recalled Dmitri Peskov, according to whom the Kremlin is still waiting for “signals” in this direction from the White House.
Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that he is preparing to speak to the Russian president, but without giving a date.
Sentence of the day
« We cannot ask the American people to expand the NATO umbrella when current members are not paying their fair share.” »
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Donald Trump’s emissary brought up the latter’s demand to see the European members of NATO increase their contribution to the organization, of which the United States is the biggest contributors. “We need to make sure these leaders are spending the right amount. We must be able to avoid war. And that assumes a credible threat from NATO,” added Richard Grenell. Currently, European members of the Atlantic Alliance spend around 2% of their GDP on Defense. Donald Trump wants them to go up to 5%. Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, also present in Davos, does not blame him. “We must collectively move up a gear and we will decide [montant] exact during the course of the year, but it will be considerably more than 2%,” he announced.
The number of the day
22. The number of arrests announced by the Ukrainian police who planned to carry out more than 1,000 searches this Thursday as part of an investigation into vast arms and ammunition trafficking. Since the start of the war, the circulation of weapons has increased in the country, fueled in particular by equipment taken from Russian soldiers on the battlefield and then resold undercover. These weapons escape control and raise fears of an increase in international trafficking.
-Today’s trend
While the greats of this world exchange politely in Davos, the Ukrainian army is retreating on the ground. This Thursday, the kyiv authorities ordered the evacuation of 267 children and their families in several localities in the Kharkiv region, in the northeast of the country, facing the risk of strikes and the continued advance of Russian troops . They are also progressing in the Donetsk region where Moscow has announced that it has captured a new village.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
Russia also increased the number of bomb drops and explosive drone shipments this Thursday. This new air offensive left three dead and more than fifty injured in three regions of the country, according to local Ukrainian authorities.
The regional prosecutor’s office in Donetsk (in the east) reported one civilian dead and three injured following the attack on the town of Kostiantynivka, located just a few kilometers from the front, by Russian hovering bombs. A little further north, a 54-year-old woman was killed in an explosive drone near the town of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region.
In the southeast, emergency services in the large city of Zaporizhia say one person was killed and 51 others injured – including four firefighters and a 2-month-old child – in missile and drone attacks overnight.
