On the diplomatic front, “Kiev is ready to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if its forces reach the border of the Russian-occupied peninsula,” a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the newspaper. FinancialTimes.
This Thursday, April 6, Emmanuel Macron was welcomed in Beijing by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, before a face-to-face meeting where the conflict in Ukraine was at the heart of the discussions.
On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin accused the secret services of Western countries of having organized terrorist attacks on its territory. In addition, since the start of the war, cyberattacks have reportedly increased. So, for Europe to be able to resist these major attacks, such as those suffered by Ukraine, it intends to equip itself with a “cyber shield”, including a “reserve cyber army”, European Commissioner Thierry Breton announced on Wednesday. , in front of the International Cybersecurity Forum.
Macron tells Xi “counting” on him to bring Russia to its senses
President Emmanuel Macron, on a state visit to Beijing, told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Thursday that he was counting on him to “bring Russia to its senses” vis-à-vis Ukraine. “I know I can count on you to bring Russia to reason and everyone to the negotiating table,” said the French head of state to the Chinese president during an official bilateral meeting.
In joint statements after the meeting, Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping called for peace talks as soon as possible to end the conflict in Ukraine, also rejecting any recourse to nuclear weapons.
Received earlier in the morning by Prime Minister Li Qiang, Emmanuel Macron “discussed the conflict in Ukraine”, according to the French presidency. “In these troubled times that we are going through”, he underlined “the importance” of “dialogue between China and France”. He then spoke with the President of the National Assembly Zhao Leji, with whom he “underlined the impact of the war in Ukraine on security and global strategic balances”. In recent weeks, international pressure has mounted a notch on China to encourage it to get involved for peace in Ukraine. Because, if Beijing says it is officially neutral, Xi Jinping has never condemned the Russian invasion or even spoken on the phone with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine “is ready” to talk to Russia about Crimea if the counter-offensive is successful
It is the most explicit statement of Ukraine’s interest in negotiations since it cut off peace talks with the Kremlin last April. And it comes from the deputy head of the office of Volodymyr Zelensky. “If we manage to achieve our strategic objectives on the battlefield and when we are on the administrative border with Crimea, we are ready to open [une] diplomatic page to discuss this issue,” Andriy Sybiha said, referring to the long-planned Kiev counteroffensive. he added.
“I don’t think there will be a very quick military solution […] therefore, we have to see what are the favorable conditions for Ukraine to negotiate and I think Ukraine would be ready to do so,” he insisted. At present, the only known contacts between Kiev and Moscow consist of negotiations for the exchange of prisoners of war and the return of children forcibly deported to Russia.
Russia says it has repelled an infiltration of Ukrainian “saboteurs” on its territory
Russia said on Thursday that it repelled a group of Ukrainian “saboteurs” who were trying to infiltrate its territory via the border region of Bryansk, where a Ukrainian pilot had already been arrested the day before.
“The Border Guard Department of the Federal Security Service of Russia in the Bryansk region foiled an attempt to enter Russian territory by a 20-man Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage group near the village of Slutchovsk,” it said. on Telegram the governor of the region, Alexandre Bogomaz.
Europe will equip itself with a “cyber shield” and a “cyber reserve”, announces Thierry Breton
Faced with the proliferation of cyberattacks, Europe wants to react. “Our ambition is to create a “European cyber shield” which will make it possible to better detect attacks upstream”, announced Thierry Breton, before the International Cybersecurity Forum. “It now takes an average of 190 days between the start of the distribution of malware (malicious software, editor’s note) and the moment it is detected”, underlined Thierry Breton, in charge of the Internal Market and Digital. These devices will be provided for by a new regulation, the “Cyber Solidarity Act”, which he will present on April 18.
Another novelty: the establishment of a “cyber reserve, made up of several thousand stakeholders, public and private service providers, on a voluntary basis, to support the defense effort in the event of an attack”, declared Thierry Breton. “This cyber reserve will be ready to intervene at the request of any member state,” he said. The new regulation also provides for a partnership between Member States to strengthen the resilience of critical infrastructure in the European Union (airports, power stations, gas pipelines, electricity networks, internet cables, etc.) with attack scenarios and penetration tests to detect vulnerabilities.
The investment will amount to “more than 1 billion euros, two-thirds financed by Europe”, he told the newspaper. The echoes. “With the war in Ukraine, cyberattacks jumped 140% in Europe last year. In this context, the pooling and coordination of our forces at European level become more necessary than ever because the threat will spread”, he added to the economic daily.
Putin accuses Westerners of plotting ‘terrorist’ attacks in Russia
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused Western secret services of being involved in “terrorist” attacks in Russia, after giving a frosty welcome to the new American ambassador to Moscow. “There is every reason to believe” that the capacities of third countries and Western secret services are “involved in the preparation of acts of sabotage and terrorism”, both in the Ukrainian territories controlled by Moscow and in Russia, has said Mr. Putin during a televised meeting of his Security Council.
Vladimir Putin’s charges are brought three days after the death of a famous Russian military blogger, killed in a bomb attack in a cafe in Saint Petersburg (northwest). He has also already accused Ukraine of several other targeted assassinations both in the occupied regions and in Russia itself, as well as sabotage operations.
Ukraine’s shell needs relaunch a French weapons site
Long in danger, the activity of the Forges de Tarbes, the only French industrial site still capable of producing 155 mm shell barrels, has been revived by the enormous needs of the Ukrainian forces for this type of ammunition. Since the fall, the Hautes-Pyrénées factory has produced approximately 1,500 barrels of a 155 mm caliber shell, the LU.211, each month, which equips the dozens of Caesar guns, supplied by France to Ukraine. . It is a “very efficient shell, the only one with a range of 42 kilometers with a very high level of precision”, explains to Agence France Presse Jérôme Garnache-Creuillot, CEO of Europlasma, parent company of Forges de Tarbes.
The site also plans to soon produce a more standard 155 mm, the M.107, to feed other types of guns used by Kiev because “today, we have extraordinary needs in Ukraine”, underlines Jérôme Garnache-Creuillot . These needs “represent much more than the combined production of all NATO countries”, he adds. For the years to come, the group had planned for the site an orientation towards other uses than armament. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine ultimately decided otherwise.