28th day of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, this Wednesday, March 22. On Tuesday, many cities continued to be bombarded such as Mariupol, Kharkiv, Odessa or Mykolaiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak by videoconference to elected members of the French Parliament this Wednesday, March 23.
► The site of the Russian editorial staff of RFI broadcasts Ukrainian public radio (in the Ukrainian language) from the home page.
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The main points:
► The Ukrainian President will speak by videoconference to the elected representatives of the French Parliament this Wednesday, March 23 from 2 p.m. UT to obtain further support from France in the face of the war led by Russia. He is also due to address the Japanese parliament earlier in the day.
► Moscow will only use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in the event of ” existential threat against Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN International on Tuesday.
► Two “ superpower bombs hit Mariupol, according to authorities in the major port city ravaged by Russian bombing where 100,000 civilians are still stranded, according to President Zelensky. The authorities announced a new effort to try to evacuate them.
► Russian troops are still trying to surround kyiv, while the inhabitants of the Ukrainian capital, under curfew, are holed up in their homes. The bombardments continued on a number of Ukrainian cities: Kharkiv, Mariupol, Odessa, Mykolaiv.
► Before Italian parliamentarians, Volodymyr Zelensky warned Italy on Tuesday against an influx of migrants threatened by hunger due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Times are given in Universal Time (UT)
03h48: “Almost 100 000 people still in Mariupol, according to Ukrainian President Zelensky
Pending the possible beginning of a ceasefire, nearly 100,000 people in inhumane conditions are trapped in the ruins of Mariupol, “ under total siege, without food, without water, without medicine, under constant bombardment “, alerted Volodymyr Zelensky in a video published Wednesday at dawn.
3:12 am: The French Parliament expects President Zelensky this Wednesday
After the italian parliament Tuesday, it is the turn of the National Assembly and the French Senate to meet exceptionally and simultaneously at 3 p.m. (2 p.m. UT), despite the end of the parliamentary session, to listen to a live message from Volodymyr Zelensky, who continues interventions in national parliaments as his country faced the Russian invasion.
No less than three candidates for the Élysée, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, also deputies, will sit at the Palais Bourbon for the 15 minutes that the Ukrainian president’s video address is supposed to last. Deliberately limited time for security reasons. A fourth deputy also presidential candidate, the communist Fabien Roussel, is excused because of a family bereavement.
With the intervention of Volodymyr Zelensky, the war in Ukraine should continue to crush the news of the presidential campaign, a defense and security council being also planned at the Élysée.
01:04: The French group TotalEnergies agrees to no longer buy Russian oil and petroleum products “at the latest by the end of 2022″. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the pressure has continued to increase on TotalEnergies, which had condemned ” Russia’s military aggression towards Ukraine but had maintained its activities there.
► TotalEnergies will stop buying Russian oil
12:12 a.m.: Without electricity, without communication, without water, constantly bombarded, the city of Mariupol suffers a siege similar to those that Russia organized in Syriaestimates the deputy Dmytro Gurin, originating in the industrial city of the edge of the sea of Azov.
Russia’s goal is to organize a famine in Mariupol and thus strengthen its position in the negotiation process. In the city there is no food. A part of the population still has some provisions, jars of vegetables, it’s a Ukrainian tradition… but there is no more water. When it snowed, everyone scooped up the snow to melt it. People prepare food over open fires. According to reports that have reached us, people have started eating their pets. In short, it’s famine there, famine and blockade. Russia bombs convoys, it shoots convoys with children. All of this becomes clear when you know that the man in charge of the siege of Mariupol is the same as the siege of Aleppo in Syria, Colonel-General Mikhail Mezentsev. There too, they were bombing the humanitarian corridors. This is obviously a proven tactic.
Dmytro Gurin (Ukrainian MP): “The goal of Russia is to organize a famine in Mariupol”