The fighting continues in Ukraine, and the number of victims continues to increase: five more civilians, including a child, were killed in Russian attacks on the night of Monday October 21 to Tuesday October 22. Returning to statements made last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also assured that his country was not asking its Western allies for nuclear weapons to confront Russia.
Information to remember
⇒ Zelensky assures that kyiv does not ask the West for nuclear weapons
⇒ The population in Ukraine has decreased by 8 million since the start of the war
⇒ North Korea denies providing troops to Moscow
Ukraine does not ask the West for nuclear weapons, assures Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured that his country was not asking its Western allies for “nuclear weapons” to fight the Russian invasion, after ambiguous statements on the issue last week. “We are not asking for nuclear weapons to be given to us,” he told reporters on Monday, his remarks being placed under embargo until Tuesday.
Last week, Volodymyr Zelensky suggested in a speech in Brussels that Ukraine would have to have “nuclear weapons” if it could not be part of NATO. “Either Ukraine has nuclear weapons, which will serve as protection, or it must be part of some kind of alliance,” he said on Thursday, adding that he did not know of any alliance “more effective” than the ‘NATO.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who himself has repeatedly raised the nuclear threat since the start of his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, called these remarks a “dangerous provocation”. “I can say right away that Russia will not allow this to happen under any circumstances,” added the Russian head of state.
After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine agreed to hand over Soviet nuclear weapons stored on its territory to Russia, under an agreement concluded in 1994 and known as the Budapest Memorandum. On Monday, Volodymyr Zelensky estimated that his country had surrendered its nuclear weapons “without receiving anything in exchange”. “We should have exchanged them for (membership in) NATO,” he said.
According to him, Germany is “skeptical” about Ukraine’s invitation to NATO because it “is afraid” of the Russian reaction, he also estimated, also judging that the possibility of starting peace negotiations with Russia “will depend” on the outcome of the American presidential election.
The population in Ukraine has fallen by 8 million since the Russian invasion in 2022
The population in Ukraine has fallen by 8 million since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which caused an exodus and a drop in the fertility rate, the UN said on Tuesday. “Overall, we see that the population in Ukraine has decreased by 8 million since the start of the war,” said the regional director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Florence Bauer, during a press briefing in Geneva, indicating that these were Ukrainian government figures.
She explained that this decline was linked to a “combination of factors” and stressed that “even before the escalation of the war, Ukraine was facing significant demographic challenges.” “The country had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. A large number of people had already left the country to pursue whatever opportunities were available to them. The population was aging and the total population was decreasing,” she detailed, adding that “with the large-scale invasion of Russia which began in 2022, the situation has worsened considerably,” she explained.
The fertility rate has collapsed and is currently around one child per woman, “which is one of the lowest in the world” and “is well below” the population renewal threshold which is 2.1 children per woman, said Florence Bauer. There are also 6.7 million people who have fled Ukraine “and a significant number of people have died because of the conflict”, added the UN representative.
Five civilians, including a child, killed in Russian attacks
Two adults and a child were killed in a nighttime attack on the town of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, and two other civilians died in a separate attack in the eastern Donetsk region, it said. Tuesday October 22 the Ukrainian authorities. In Sumy, capital of the region of the same name, the deadly combat drone strike hit houses in this city which had more than 250,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion launched in February 2022, said the regional administration. . “This Russian terror can only be defeated by unity with the world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram.
North Korea denies providing troops to Moscow for Ukraine war
North Korea has denied providing Russia with troops that could be mobilized in the conflict in Ukraine, with a Pyongyang representative to the UN even going so far as to describe Seoul’s assertion as an “unfounded rumor”. “Regarding the so-called military cooperation with Russia, my delegation does not feel the need to comment on these baseless stereotypical rumors,” a North Korean representative told a session of the General Assembly of the at the end of the day on Monday in New York. Seoul’s claims “are aimed at smearing the image of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and undermining the legitimate, friendly and cooperative relations between two sovereign states,” he added.
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reacted on Tuesday by publishing a statement in which she described kyiv and Seoul as “bad dogs raised by the United States.” Kim Yo-jong again accused South Korea of sending unmanned drones toward the North Korean capital Pyongyang, saying staging a “military provocation” against a nuclear state like North Korea does not can only be done by “crazy people from the regimes of Seoul and Kiev”. Seoul and kyiv are making “reckless remarks against nuclear-weapon states, without any ability to follow up,” she said.