There will probably be no winter truce in Russia’s war on Ukrainian territory. In the face of intense Russian strikes that continued Thursday on Kherson, killing two and depriving the southern Ukrainian city of electricity, the European Union announced new sanctions against Moscow and reached an agreement for new aid of 18 billion euros in Kyiv.
The United States will expand its Ukrainian military training program from January, with the aim of training more soldiers and giving them broader skills, as kyiv expects a new Russian offensive, announced Thursday the Pentagon.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he intended to call his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about Russian bombings and drone attacks in Ukraine and when to finalize an agreement on the security of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
A salvo of Russian strikes fell Friday morning on several cities of Ukraine, with explosions heard in the center of kyiv and power cuts reported in several localities of the country. “Do not leave the shelters! The attack on the capital is still in progress!”, wrote on Telegram the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitschko. Water cuts are in progress. The capital’s metro has also been shut down so that stations can serve as shelters. Russia fired “about 40 missiles” at kyiv on Friday morning, according to local authorities.
His counterparts in Kharkiv (north-east) and Poltava (center-east) announced that their towns were without electricity following morning bombardments.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Belarus on Monday
Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Belarus, his ally in the conflict in Ukraine, next Monday, the Belarusian presidential press service announced on Friday. Vladimir Putin will meet with his counterpart Alexander Lukashenko at the Independence Palace in Minsk during “his working visit to Belarus”, specifies the press service. Bilateral talks will focus on “Russian-Belarusian integration”, as the two countries have concluded several cooperation agreements in the economic and military fields.
“The presidents will also prioritize security issues and exchange views on the situation in the region and the world,” the statement added, without specifically mentioning the Ukrainian conflict. Belarus served as a rear base for Russian troops for their offensive in Ukraine launched at the end of February, but the Belarusian army has not taken part in the fighting on Ukrainian territory so far. In mid-October, Belarus and Russia announced the creation of a joint military force, with a purely “defensive” purpose according to Minsk.
- Athletics: Russians remain banned “for the near future” (Coe)
Russian athletes remain barred from international competition “for the foreseeable future” due to the war in Ukraine, although the International Olympic Committee is beginning to consider their reinstatement, according to the president of the International Athletics Federation Sebastian Coe. “For me, nothing has changed,” said the boss of World Athletics during a virtual exchange with several journalists, when asked about the door ajar last Friday to Russian and Belarusian athletes during the 11th “Olympic Summit”, while the IOC recommended since the end of February to all international federations that they be banned from the sporting world.
Echoing the terms of the decision announced by World Athletics on March 1, Sebastian Coe assured that his position remained “very clear” about the Russians: “all the athletes, as well as the coaching staff ‘the entourage’, for to use an IOC expression – are excluded from all events organized by World Athletics, for the foreseeable future”. Without deciding anything for the moment, the Olympic Summit had outlined on Friday the track of a reintegration of the Russians and Belarusians in dispersed order, according to the geographical areas and the sports: the Olympic Committee of Asia offered to “facilitate (their) participation” in competitions organized in Asia, and some international federations – not named in the final press release – felt that there was no longer one solution for everyone”.
- Macron wants to call Putin on drone attacks and central security
“The most urgent subject today is to continue to call for a truce in bombings and drone attacks”, underlined the French president during a press conference at the end of a European summit in Brussels. “I intend to call President Putin on this subject because very clearly these attacks (..) for a good part of them are war crimes, they (target) civilian infrastructure, civilians themselves”, he said. “It’s not the nature of the special operation he launched, the war he launched at the beginning, which was a territorial conquest,” he added.
French President and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, ASEAN’s current president, called on Tuesday for “an immediate halt to airstrikes and drone attacks against Ukrainian civilian populations and infrastructure”. “I would like this appeal to convince certain powers, China, India and others to join us and put pressure on Russia,” continued the head of state. The French president is also involved in negotiations, around the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to secure five nuclear power plants in Ukraine, including that of Zaporijia occupied by the Russian army.
- 16 strikes on Kherson city on Thursday, new EU aid
The Russian military struck Kherson on Thursday “more than 16 times”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. The bombings hit the center of this city located 500 kilometers from kyiv as the crow flies, on the Dnieper River, retaken by kyiv on November 11 from Russian forces. “The enemy again struck the center of the city, 100 meters from the building of the regional administration” already bombed the day before, said on Telegram the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reporting ” two dead”.
The strike “hit a building used by local authorities, volunteer groups and humanitarian organizations to deliver aid to residents of Kherson”, UN humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine Denise Brown said in a statement. communicated. For his part, the regional governor Yaroslav Yanouchevytch indicated a few hours later that a new “heavy bombardment” targeted a “critical infrastructure site”. Since then, “Kherson has been totally without electricity,” he said on Telegram. Liberated by the Ukrainian army a month ago, the city of Kherson has since been the target of Russian strikes almost daily.
Since October and a series of humiliating setbacks, Russia has been targeting energy infrastructure in Kherson as in the rest of the country with its missiles and drones. In response, the 27 members of the European Union agreed on a 9th package of sanctions against Russia, which remains to be specified. They also decided on aid of 18 billion euros to kyiv, Poland having lifted its reservations.
- World Bank releases $2 billion to support Ukraine’s private sector
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a subsidiary of the World Bank specializing in support for private investors, announced on Thursday that it would put in place a package of aid for the Ukrainian private sector for an amount of two billion dollars. This aid must “meet the immediate needs of the private sector, which has been devastated by the war, and help prepare for reconstruction,” the IFC said in a statement.
Half of the package will be financed with equity from the IFC, the other half based on guarantees provided by donor governments. According to data from the Ukrainian central bank, 11% of Ukrainian companies have had to lower the curtain since the beginning of the Russian invasion, and half are idling. In addition, five million jobs have been destroyed since the start of the conflict, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy. “Supporting the resilience of the private sector and building its capacity is a priority for us. Being able to provide capital in such an extraordinary time is essential to keep essential businesses and services functioning and then, when the time comes, prepare for the massive reconstruction efforts. “, said the director general of the IFC Makhtar Diop, quoted in the press release. The IFC also specifies that it signed an agreement with the Ukrainian government at the beginning of the week to provide it with strategic advice for the reconstruction of its economy and the reforms of its banking sector.
- Washington will develop its training program for Ukrainian soldiers
While the United States has so far limited the training of Ukrainian soldiers to the armaments they supplied to kyiv, they will now organize joint maneuvers and teach them to coordinate infantry maneuvers with artillery support, Department of Defense spokesman General Pat Ryder told reporters. This program, which should start “around January”, “will train approximately 500 Ukrainian soldiers per month”, he said during a press briefing.
“The idea is to give them advanced collective training that enables them to conduct military operations with combined arms and to maneuver on the battlefield,” he added. The training will be conducted at the battalion level (a few hundred soldiers) and will include instructions for officers. This training will be conducted in Germany and will be added to the specific training dedicated to the multiple weapons delivered to Ukraine, and to the more comprehensive training conducted for several months already by the allies, in particular the British army. Some 3,100 soldiers have already been trained by the United States in the weapons it supplies to kyiv, and the allies have trained 12,000 more.
- EU adopts new sanctions against Russia
The 27 member states of the EU agreed Thursday evening to adopt new sanctions against Russia, in response to the war launched by Moscow in Ukraine, announced the Czech presidency of the EU. The European Commission presented this new sanctions package on December 7, proposing to add nearly 200 individuals and entities to the EU blacklist, including the Russian armed forces and three of the country’s banks.
Brussels had also recommended prohibiting any new investment in the Russian mining sector and tightening restrictions on trade in dual-use goods, civil and military, targeting chemicals, nerve agents and electronic and computer components. The European executive also proposed banning the export to Russia of components for manufacturing drones, as well as the suspension of four new Russian media accused of participating in Kremlin propaganda. The agreement on this 9th package of European sanctions against Moscow was reached unanimously between the ambassadors of the Twenty-Seven in Brussels, on the sidelines of a summit of European leaders.
- The head of the armed forces details his needs
In a newspaper interview The Economist, Ukrainian General Valeri Zalouzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, gives military details on Ukraine’s needs: “I need 300 tanks, 600 to 700 ifvs (infantry fighting vehicles ), 500 howitzers,” he said. The claimed military arsenal is, in quantity, greater than the total armored forces of most European armies.