Left in the port city of Mariupol to defend their homeland, Ukrainian soldiers find themselves trapped, surrounded by new Russian troops sent to entirely conquer the city in the south-east of the country. Russia asks them to stop the fight by using a humanitarian corridor.
- Call for help from Mariupol soldiers
“We may be living our last days, even our last hours,” said a Ukrainian officer besieged in Mariupol, calling in a message posted on Facebook on Wednesday April 20 for the evacuation by Westerners of the last soldiers present in the port city. . Ukrainian fighters are entrenched in a steel complex besieged by the Russians, at least “ten times more numerous”, in the words of the commander of the national navy. The Russian Ministry of Defense has also called on the entire Ukrainian army to “lay down their arms” and the last defenders of Mariupol to cease their “senseless resistance”.
Russia announced Tuesday, April 19 through the voice of its Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, the beginning of a “new phase of the war”, synonymous for kyiv with the beginning of the great “battle for Donbass”, feared since weeks. The east of the country is pounded by high-precision missiles, transforming Lugansk and its surroundings into “real hell”, in the words of the governor of the region.
- An agreement reached on an evacuation corridor for civilians from Mariupol
An agreement has been reached with Russia on a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from the besieged port of Mariupol, the first such agreement since Saturday April 16, according to kyiv. “We managed to find a preliminary agreement (with the Russians) on a humanitarian corridor for women, children and the elderly,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.
- New military aid promised by the United States
In order to strengthen its air force, Ukraine received fighter jets and spare parts, the United States said on Tuesday (April 29th). If no details have been specified as to the nature of these weapons, the experts agree that they are MIG-29 planes, of Soviet manufacture and held by countries of Eastern Europe. East, especially Poland.
According to the American media CNN and NBC News, the United States is also preparing to approve a new package of military aid to Ukraine, amounting to 800 million dollars. The discovery of the massacres perpetrated by the Russian army decided Joe Biden to directly supply arms to Ukraine, which he had refused for more than a month in order not to appear as a co-belligerent. Last week, the Pentagon announced that it had delivered Howitzer artillery pieces to the Ukrainian army.
During a virtual meeting devoted to the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the Western allies also agreed on the need “to increase the international isolation of Moscow” by adopting new sanctions.
A summit of G20 countries under tension
The finance ministers and central bankers of the G20 are meeting on Wednesday against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, which risks paralyzing discussions and jeopardizing any progress on the implementation of the common framework to restructure the debt of the least developed countries. poorest, the initial purpose of this meeting. This is the first time that the big moneymakers of the G20 have met since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24.
Indonesia, which chairs the G20, has repeated that it will remain impartial despite strong calls to exclude Russia from meetings of the group of twenty major world economies. Faced with this refusal, certain ministers, including US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, decided to boycott part of the sessions.