Ukrainian troops are engaged in a “fierce” confrontation with Russian forces trying to seize Vougledar, southwest of Donetsk, where fighting has intensified in recent days. Both sides have claimed victory, but the city remains contested according to Kyiv. The spokesman for the Ukrainian army for the eastern zone, Serguiy Tcherevaty, confirmed “fierce fighting”, while ensuring that the Russians had been repelled.
150 km from Bakhmout, “serious, brutal” clashes are taking place in this mining town which had 15,000 inhabitants before the invasion. Russian troops have “established themselves in the south-east and east of the city”, said an official of the pro-Russian authorities in the eastern region of Donetsk, Ian Gagin. “The encirclement and future liberation” of this locality will “change the balance of power on the front” by paving the way for an offensive towards Pokrovsk and Kurakhové, localities located further north, judged the leader of separatists from Donetsk, Denis Pushilin.
Also in the east, in Chassiv Iar, two people were killed on Friday and at least five injured in Russian artillery fire, local authorities reported. Further north, in the Kharkiv region, the shelling of the village of Dvoritchna left two other dead, announced the Ukrainian presidency. The southern city of Kherson was also targeted by Russian shells, according to the same source.
A new Russian offensive planned for February 24
Ukraine said this week that outnumbered Russian troops had stepped up their attacks in the east, particularly on Vougledar and Bakhmout, the latter of which had been their target for months. And that a new Russian offensive is in preparation for February 24, a year to the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, assured Oleksii Danilov, secretary of the Council of Defense and National Security of Ukraine.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia is seeking to “disperse” Ukrainian forces in order to “create the conditions for a decisive offensive operation”. Russian soldiers and men from the paramilitary group Wagner recently took Soledar, north of Bakhmout, a first success for many months and after a series of setbacks for the Kremlin. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists and convicts to try to break through Ukrainian lines and conquer the rest of Donbass, a vast industrial zone in eastern Ukraine.
New aid from European countries
In this context, President Zelensky welcomed the decision announced by Poland to deliver to his country 60 additional tanks, half of which will be a modernized version of the Soviet T-72, after the 14 German-made Leopard 2s already promised. At the same time, the Belgian government has undertaken to grant Ukraine new funding for the supply of missiles, machine guns, ammunition and armored vehicles.
For its part, the European Union has decided to extend for six months its sanctions imposed on Russia when it annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and is preparing new measures against Moscow. As for the Ukrainian Air Force, it judged on Friday that the American-made F16 “could be the best candidate” to “become the only type” of multipurpose aircraft in its fleet, according to its spokesman Yuri Ignat . The Ukrainian president is calling for fighter planes and long-range missiles, as many weapons as Westerners have so far refused to provide.
Emmanuel Macron will continue to “talk to Russia”
On Friday, Emmanuel Macron stressed that he would continue to “talk to Russia” despite the criticism it arouses. The Head of State also called on China to speak out against the “imperialist war” in Ukraine. “All our countries have a position to hold, that of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. […] whatever the friendships, the alliances that we can nurture”, he said during a reception at the Elysée on the occasion of the New Year of the lunar calendar. time have been able to reproach me for speaking to Russia and I will continue to speak to Russia”, added Emmanuel Macron, one of the rare Western heads of state to have kept in touch with the master of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
“But who could defend the possibility of a free and stable international order if we closed our eyes to an imperialist war?”, he launched in an allusion in particular to China. “We are all responsible for this order and we must enforce it by simply being clear about our principles”, continued Emmanuel Macron, in front of an audience of economic, artistic and academic personalities linked to Asia.
During the G20 summit in November in Indonesia, he had already called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to “unite” their “forces” against the war in Ukraine, stressing that the “stability” of the world was also in the “interest” of China. Moscow and Beijing present themselves as a geopolitical counterweight to the United States and its allies. Russia is also seeking to strengthen its ties with China in the face of Western sanctions imposed following its offensive against Ukraine. The United States and its partners are worried about a possible temptation by Beijing to invade Taiwan, after the Russian precedent in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky calls on the head of the CIO to come to the front
The Ukrainian president denounced the “hypocrisy” of the International Olympic Committee, which despite repeated calls from kyiv to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympics scheduled for Paris, declared on Wednesday “studying” the possibility of authorizing them to participate under neutral banner. He invited IOC chief Thomas Bach to visit Bakhmout, one of the hottest spots in the war with Russia “to see with his own eyes that neutrality does not exist”, promising to work to “cleanse the hypocrisy of the management of international Olympic structures”.
A series of behind-the-scenes maneuvers were also undertaken in the fall to bring Russians and Belarusians back into the Olympic fold, excluded from most international competitions since the invasion of Ukraine. These proposals aroused the ire of the Ukrainians. Already Thursday, the Ukrainian Minister of Sports threatened to boycott the 2024 Olympics. “If we are not heard, I do not exclude the possibility that we boycott and refuse to participate in the Olympic Games”, warned Vadym Goutzaït on Facebook.
“But we will do everything so that the world protects sport from any influence of the terrorist state, which is simply inevitable if Russian sportsmen take part. […] at the Paris Olympics, added Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday. Russia must stop its aggression and its terror. And only then will it be possible to discuss Russian participation in the context of Olympism.”
Putin accuses ‘neo-Nazis in Ukraine’ of committing crimes against civilians
Vladimir Putin on Friday accused “neo-Nazis in Ukraine” of committing crimes against civilians, on the occasion of the international day of victims of the Holocaust, a rhetoric to which he resorts to defend the Russian military offensive. “Forgetting the lessons of history leads to the repetition of terrible tragedies. The proof of this is the crimes against civilians, the ethnic cleansing (and) the punitive actions organized by the neo-Nazis in Ukraine”, denounced the Russian president in a communicated.
“On the day of the liberation of the German Hitler death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, let us remember that Putin is building new camps in the east”, reacted sharply the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, calling for support for the Ukraine so that history “does not come full circle”. The head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna for her part castigated the “appalling” and “shocking” statements of the Russian head of state. “It’s an unworthy provocation on a day like today,” she added. To explain the intervention of his army, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denounced “the genocide”, according to him, of the Russian-speaking populations of eastern Ukraine and described the government of Volodymyr Zelensky as “neo-Nazi”.