While Ukraine is alerting Westerners to the use by the Russians of drones delivered by Iran, this time it was pro-Russian authorities in Sevastopol, Crimea, who announced that a power plant in the region had was attacked by a drone on Thursday, October 27. “Today night there was an unmanned aerial vehicle attack on the Balaklava thermal power plant,” Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvojayev said on Telegram. “The transformer sustained minimal damage. There were no casualties.” The plant’s transformer, which caught fire, “was under maintenance and not working,” he said, adding that “workers at the plant quickly managed the fire”.
A few hours earlier, the current president of the Economic Community of West African States, the Bissau-Guinean Umaro Sissoco Embalo, one of the few to be able to visit both Vladimir Putin , on Tuesday, and to Volodymyr Zelensky, the next day, spoke out in favor of “peace between these two brotherly countries”.
- Vladimir Putin supervises the training of his nuclear deterrent forces
Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw the training of his nuclear deterrent forces on Wednesday, as Moscow repeated to India and China its allegations that Ukraine was preparing a “dirty bomb”. This type of exercise is carried out periodically, but it intervenes, this time, in a context of war. “Under the leadership of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Vladimir Putin, the land, sea and air strategic deterrent forces conducted training and practical launches of ballistic and cruise missiles were carried out,” the Kremlin said.
kyiv – which denies any desire to use such a weapon – and its Western allies fear that such accusations will serve as a pretext for Moscow to escalate the conflict going as far as the use of nuclear weapons by Russia. As proof, the Slovenian government assured that Moscow had used a photo from Slovenia and dating from 2010 to support its allegations on Twitter of the “dirty bomb” that kyiv would prepare.
- By helping Ukraine, France “is not putting itself in danger”
France, which has been supplying Ukraine with a certain number of military equipment since the start of the Russian invasion, is not making “any transfer likely to endanger its security”, assured Wednesday evening the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu. . “We do not make transfers that would put the French nation in danger. We do it with the pragmatism that leads us to look at the reality of our stocks, but also the reality of the advice given to us by our generals”, declared the minister during of a debate on the conflict in the Senate.
This “pragmatism” nevertheless leads France “to draw conclusions” on the replenishment of its stocks of equipment: for example, “the 18 Caesar guns which were given to Ukraine made the subject since last July of a new order for replenishment”, recalled the Minister.
- Russia less optimistic than UN on continuation of grain export deal
If Martin Griffiths, the head of the United Nations humanitarian agency, was “relatively optimistic” about the extension of the agreement which allows Ukrainian grain exports, Russia, for its part, wished to insist on its own claims. A first agreement, signed on July 22 under the aegis of the UN, set up procedures for 120 days to allow the export of Ukrainian cereals blocked by the war. A second agreement, signed the same day, provides for the facilitation of Russian exports, but Moscow complains of not being able to sell, despite everything, its production and its fertilizers because of Western sanctions.
“I’m glad Martin Griffiths is relatively optimistic about extending the deal, but we still have to see the implementation of the second part of the deal before any decisions are made,” he told reporters. Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia. “Russia wants to see its grain and fertilizer exports on the world market, which has not been the case since the beginning of the agreement”, he repeated, assuring that the “obstacles were always the same”.
- Fighting continues in the Donetsk region
In a video released late Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said fierce fighting continued in Donetsk Oblast near Bakhmout and Avdiivka. “I would like to pay tribute to the soldiers of the 25th brigade for their courage during the liberation of the occupied territories in the Luhansk oblast”, he underlined.
According to him, the Russian occupiers have already lost so much equipment that they will never be able to “compensate for the losses”. He finally again denounced “the madness of the Russian command”, particularly “visible according to him” in the east of the country.