a new Russian assault on Avdiïvka – L’Express

⇒ A new Russian assault on Avdiïvka

⇒ Russia announced that it had shot down 16 drones

⇒ Estonia accuses Russia of carrying out a “hybrid attack”

The Russian army has launched its third wave of assaults since October 10 against the town of Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine, and is systematically bombarding its center, its mayor said on Friday. For more than a month, this industrial city, almost surrounded but still served by an asphalt road, has been facing incessant attacks from Moscow’s forces, who have been seeking to seize it for years.

“The third wave (of assaults) has begun,” said the mayor, Vitaly Barabach, on Ukrainian television, reporting attacks from “all sides”: on its southern and northern flanks, on the industrial zone as well as that from Spartak, a village located between Avdiïvka and Donetsk, the Russian-occupied capital of the eponymous region.

Sergei Mironov, Russian MP and leader of a pro-Kremlin party, denied Thursday having adopted a two-year-old Ukrainian girl transferred to Russia. Earlier Thursday, the BBC and the Russian investigative media Important Stories assured that Sergei Mironov, supporter of the assault in Ukraine and figure of the Putin regime for more than 20 years, had adopted, with his wife, a little Ukrainian girl two years transferred to Russia.

According to the BBC, the little girl, named Margarita, was part of a group of 48 children sent to Russia from a home in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, after that city was conquered at the start of the Russian offensive. of February 2022. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said that the “illegal deportation” of these 48 children from Kherson was under investigation.

The 70-year-old political figure quickly called the press reports “an informational attack” and “hysterical falsification unleashed by the Ukrainian special services and their Western manipulators.” “There is only one goal behind all this: to discredit those who today adopt an uncompromising patriotic position,” added this former president of the upper house of the Russian Parliament on X (ex-Twitter) (2001). -2011).

A 56-year-old trucker died Thursday, November 23, along the border between Ukraine and Poland, whose roads have been blocked since the beginning of November by Polish truckers protesting against “unfair competition” from Ukrainian truckers. . “The driver, who had been queuing for almost three days to cross the border, died in the night in a parking lot near Korczowa, detailed Volodymyr Mykhalevytch, director of the NGO Association of International Road Carriers of Ukraine. Police Polish said it was “a natural death, but the circumstances are still under investigation,” he added.

Russia claimed to have destroyed 16 Ukrainian drones, in the south of the country and above the annexed Crimean peninsula, during the night of Thursday to Friday November 14. An attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack using aerial drones against sites on the territory of the Russian Federation has been foiled,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Vladimir Putin went to Minsk in Belarus on Thursday, November 23, to attend a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military organization headed by Russia. According to the Associated Press, he then praised the group’s role in “guaranteeing peace and stability in the region.” Armenia’s absence was particularly noted, with Moscow fearing that Yerevan would abandon the alliance. “We hope that Armenia will not change the course of its foreign policy, that it will remain our ally,” declared Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, interviewed by the Russian public channel Pervy Kanal. “We will continue to talk to them,” he added.

The Estonian Interior Minister accuses the Kremlin of having implemented a “hybrid attack maneuver”, which would consist of bringing migrants into its territory. According to information from the Estonian ministry, around thirty migrants, mainly Somalis and Syrians, attempted to enter the territory via Narva, a border crossing point with Russia. Estonia warns: it is ready to close its borders “if migratory pressure from Russia intensifies”, according to a spokesperson from the minister to Reuters.