28 drones destroyed in night attack – L’Express

According to the Ukrainian Defense Forces for the South of the country, “the night attack of the enemy, which mobilized a group of attack drones in our sector of responsibility, was once again directed against the port infrastructure of the Danube”. Since the abandonment in July of the grain agreement which allowed Ukraine to freely export its production, Russia has increased attacks in these two regions, where crucial platforms and ports for trade on the Black Sea are located, like those on the Danube of Izmaïl and Reni.

Three people, including a toddler, were killed overnight after debris from a downed drone fell, destroying residential buildings in Russia’s Belgorod region, the local governor announced Thursday morning.

An international team of prosecutors seeking to bring senior Russian officers to justice over the Ukraine invasion has already gathered “thousands” of evidence, the head of the European justice agency told AFP on Wednesday Eurojust. Prosecutors are sifting through wiretaps, videos, satellite images and testimonies, building a mountain of evidence that will eventually number in “hundreds of thousands”, Ladislav Hamran said in an interview with AFP at The Hague.

“We are talking about an unprecedented amount of evidence,” he stressed from the agency’s headquarters. “More submissions are arriving at Eurojust from different countries […] in the end we will be talking about hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence,” he added. The European judicial agency coordinates a kind of prosecutor’s office made up of representatives from several European countries, the United States and the Criminal Court (ICC), working together to bring Russian leaders to justice for the invasion of Ukraine.

Created barely three months ago, the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression (ICPA) aims to fill a gap in international law that has been particularly criticized since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This office stores the evidence in a secure facility and translates it into English and Ukrainian, so it can be used in a future court. Sometimes dubbed “Nuremberg 2.0,” the ICPA is the first attempt since the Nazi war crimes tribunals to build a case against a country’s top leaders for the crime of aggression.

Vladimir Putin is in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday to meet some of his rare allies, his first trip abroad since he was the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the “deportation” of children Ukrainians since March 2022. He has taken care in recent months to avoid large international gatherings (appearing largely absent from the BRICS summit in South Africa in August, then from that of the G20 in India in September), but does not risk to be arrested during this trip, this Central Asian country close to Moscow not having ratified the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the Court.

After speaking with the president, during this visit which coincides with the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Russian military base of Kant in Kyrgyzstan, the Russian president will participate on Friday in a summit of countries of the former USSR. The Belarusian Alexander Lukashenko will be present, but also leaders who are more doubtful about the invasion of Ukraine, such as the Kazakh Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev and the Uzbek Chavkat Mirzioïev.

Vladimir Putin is also expected in China in October, at the invitation of his ally Xi Jinping, to participate in an international economic forum. This will be his first trip to this country, a close partner, since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. His head of diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, will go there from October 16 to 18.

“It was clearly expressed that America will continue to provide Ukraine with the constant and uninterrupted support necessary for its defense,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in his daily message on Wednesday, October 11, after a meeting in Brussels with the American Secretary of State. Defense, Lloyd Austin. He added that he had discussed “how to strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities” before winter, particularly in terms of drones and missiles.

While the attention of the United States is focused on the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, Kiev also fears a reduction in Western aid, while it expects, as in the winter of 2022, a new Russian massive bombing campaign on its essential infrastructure, which last year plunged millions of people into darkness and cold. “We need the support of leaders, that’s why I’m here,” declared the Ukrainian president, who came as a surprise guest to the Alliance headquarters in Brussels to share his concerns before winter during a one-on-one meeting. meeting of defense ministers. The day before, he had said he was worried about the consequences on the contribution of the allies to his country of the war between Israel and Hamas, after the attack launched on Saturday by the Palestinian Islamist movement from Gaza.

NATO countries assured Wednesday that they would not weaken in this support. NATO countries assured Wednesday that they would not weaken in their support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian president is calling for more missiles, particularly long-range missiles, to strike Russian positions in depth. Ukrainian officials have been urging Germany for several months to deliver Taurus cruise missiles, rejected once again yesterday by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. Belgium, on the other hand, took advantage of the visit of the Ukrainian president to announce to him that it was finally prepared to deliver combat aircraft to Kiev “from 2025”, when initially there was only question of participating in the training Ukrainians to pilot American F-16s. A late deadline at a time when the Ukrainian counter-offensive is progressing but without a decisive breakthrough, notably due to a lack of air support, according to experts.

The Russian army assured on Wednesday that it had “improved” its positions thanks to its large-scale offensive around the town of Avdiïvka, in eastern Ukraine, even if the Kiev forces claimed for their part to have repulsed its assault. The head of the Russian occupation of the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, applauded “advances” and the “consolidation of new positions”. Avdiïvka, built around a large coking plant, is located 13 kilometers from Donetsk, the capital, under Russian control, of the eponymous region whose annexation Vladimir Putin claimed a year ago.

The attack on this industrial city in Donbass seems to worry the Ukrainian authorities, who have been engaged in a sluggish counter-offensive for months. The attack on this industrial city in Donbass seems to worry the Ukrainian authorities, who have been engaged in a sluggish counter-offensive for months. Ukraine reported on Tuesday “massive attacks” by Russian soldiers, warning that they were trying to surround Avdiivka, before saying at the end of the day that they had succeeded in “preventing the loss of positions”.