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, the 981st day of the war.
Fact of the day
He decided to change his tune. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the Westerners’ “zero” reaction to the arrival of North Korean troops in Russia to fight Ukraine, in an interview with South Korean media published this Thursday. kyiv and its Western partners accuse North Korea of having sent some 10,000 soldiers to Russia to engage against Ukraine, denouncing an “escalation” and “internationalization” of the conflict.
“I think the reaction on this subject is zero, it has been zero,” declared Volodymyr Zelensky about his partners in this interview with the South Korean channel KBS, in which he also said “ surprised by China’s silence” on this deployment.
During this interview, the Ukrainian president estimated that President Vladimir Putin “is testing the reaction of the West, the reaction of NATO and the reaction of South Korea” by engaging this first group of North Korean soldiers on the Ukrainian front. And if Western reaction remains non-existent, “then the number of North Korean troops on our borders will increase”.
He compared the Western response to the arrival of these soldiers to that which followed the “occupation of Crimea”, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, after which there had been no “strong measures” of the West, according to him.
Today’s statement
“We have not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we expect this to happen in the coming days”
The words are signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The latter estimated this Thursday of the 10,000 North Korean soldiers who entered Russia, up to 8,000 “were deployed in the Kursk region”, on the border with Ukraine.
Russia has trained North Korean troops “in artillery, drones, basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that it fully intends to use these forces in front-line operations,” he said.
“If these troops engaged in combat or combat support operations against Ukraine, they would become legitimate military targets,” said Anthony Blinken.
The number of the day
Three. This is the number of deaths recorded after the Russian bombing on Wednesday on a residential building in Kharkiv, a large city in northeastern Ukraine, according to a new report published Thursday by the Ukrainian authorities.
The death toll “stands at three” as rescuers pulled out the bodies of a man and a 15-year-old boy from the rubble on Thursday, the attorney general’s office said. The third victim is a 12-year-old child, regional governor Oleg Synegoubov said earlier. “Thirty-five other people were injured in the attack,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
A guided aerial bomb, a powerful weapon widely used by Russia, hit a building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, on Wednesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained.
The rescuers’ work was complicated by a “threat of collapse” of the building, due to damage caused by the aerial bomb, according to Oleg Synegubov. The mayor of Kharkiv said that the air attack had destroyed several floors.
The trend
kyiv declared on Thursday to support Georgia “in all circumstances” in its path towards membership of the EU and NATO, after the victory, during the contested legislative elections, of the Georgian Dream party, considered by its opponents to be pro-Russian.
“Ukraine will in all circumstances support the Georgian people in their aspiration to continue their strategic path towards membership in the EU and NATO,” wrote the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on its website, in reaction to the results of the legislative elections held on Saturday in Georgia.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
The electoral commission confirmed Thursday the legislative victory of the ruling party in Georgia, contested by the pro-European opposition and the president, who rejected a summons from the prosecution to detail her accusations of fraud. The Kremlin has rejected accusations of interference in Georgia’s electoral process.
This country of four million inhabitants, bordering the Black Sea, remains deeply marked by a brief war in 2008 with the Russian army. At the end of this conflict, Russia, a historic power in the region, installed military bases in two Georgian separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose unilaterally proclaimed independence it recognized.
