Doubts about a possible invasion of Ukraine by Russia at the beginning of 2022, until the launch of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in June 2023. From the Boutcha massacre to the terrible battle of Bakhmout, retrace in cards more than a year of an abominable war in the heart of Europe.
July 5, 2023
The Ukrainian army claimed on Tuesday evening to have targeted a Russian “formation” in Makiyvka, an occupied city in eastern Ukraine, where Russian media reported one death and 36 civilians injured in an attack led by Kiev . The fear of an explosion at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant remains a major concern.
June 26, 2023
Since Sunday, June 25, fighting has been going on on the left bank of the Dnieper, occupied by the Russians, near the destroyed Antonivka bridge, upstream from the city of Kherson. Several sources, pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian, announce that a group of Ukrainian fighters has crossed the river and is trying to establish a bridgehead in the area.
June 25, 2023
In the aftermath of the Prigojine adventure in Russia, the Ukrainian front remained stable, with failed counter-offensives by the Ukrainians around Bakhmout, and a Russian strike on Kiev which caused the death of five civilians.
June 24, 2023
On Saturday, June 24, Wagner’s mercenary forces seized the town of Rostov-sur-le-Don, the headquarters of the Russian army in the south and a high place of command of the war in Ukraine. Other forces of Wagner go up the highway towards Moscow, shooting down at least six helicopters and a plane of the Russian army, before turning back following a compromise found with the power.
June 20, 2023
June 13, 2023
Anxiety hovers over the region of Belgorod, a metropolis of 350,000 souls, bordering Ukraine, increasingly targeted by attacks or pro-Ukrainian incursions. Life is punctuated by Ukrainian attacks, between loyalty to the Kremlin and a feeling of abandonment. The small town of Chebekino, 40,000 inhabitants, has been constantly targeted since June 1.
June 13, 2023
June 7, 2023
In search of civilians trapped in the floods after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, Ukrainian relief workers ventured to the left bank of the Dnieper River, in territory occupied by Moscow and despite the surrounding bombardments. The Dnieper River has acted for several months as a natural front line between the Ukrainian forces, located on its right bank, and the troops from Moscow opposite, who occupy part of the Kherson region.
June 6, 2023
The origin of the partial destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine still remains uncertain. Ukrainian forces accuse Russian forces, while Putin denounces a “barbaric act” and blames it on the kyiv authorities. Only one certainty, the endangerment of several thousand people and power cuts with the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. Fears of a nuclear disaster at the Zaporijjia power plant are also reported. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky describes this event as “ecocide”.
June 5, 2023
After weeks of preparation, the Ukrainian army may have finally launched its offensive in an attempt to break through the Russian defenses in hopes of much-needed success for the rest of the war. In accordance with their line for several days, the Ukrainian authorities remain very vague about their actions, maintaining the fog of war. The Russians claim to have repelled a Ukrainian offensive in the Zaporizhia region (south), and claim to have inflicted heavy losses on kyiv.
May 30, 2023
For the second time in a month, Moscow was the target of drones on Tuesday, intercepted by anti-aircraft defense. In the border regions with Ukraine, attempted incursions and acts of sabotage are constantly increasing, reaching places far from the border.
June 10, 2023
From the original river that tied it existentially to Ukraine, Russia only managed to make it a front line. And on the maps she already prints, she is now reduced to dreaming of the Dnieper on the border.
June 7, 2023
Along these banks, Ukraine and Russia were born more than a millennium ago. The two countries then become one. This first Eastern Slavic state, the Rus’ of kyiv, is entirely structured around the Dnieper – from its mouth in the Black Sea, to its source in the north of present-day Russia, to the Baltic Sea. A same origin which was one of the pretexts invoked by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. And if from the river flowed a casus belli, the descent of its Ukrainian portion now gives the story of the war.
May 23, 2023
In Poland, the city of Rzeszow, in the east of the country, is at the forefront of the military logistics system supplying the Ukrainian army. Rzeszow’s 200,000 residents hosted 100,000 Ukrainian refugees at the height of the humanitarian crisis in April 2022, making the city the first in the world to be awarded the title of “savior city” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. An hour by car from the border, this medium-sized town has metamorphosed since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a cosmopolitan core and a real strategic rearguard of the Allied forces.
May 22, 2023
The DTEK company has just inaugurated a farm of 19 turbines erected despite the war and its multiple challenges. Against the elements first. Torrential rains turned roads into rivers, fields into rice paddies and excavations for the foundations of wind turbines into muddy pools. Then there was the frost which paralyzed the giant crane, 120 meters high which raises the masts and fixes the blades.
May 19, 2023
The city known as Bakhmout, the scene for ten months of fighting described as the fiercest and deadliest since the start of the war, is now in the hands of Russian forces. The head of the Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigogine, released a video filmed outside the station on Saturday afternoon, in which he waves his country’s flag and proclaims: “ On May 20, 2023 at noon, the city was completely liberated. »
May 15, 2023
Volodymyr Zelensky is back in Paris. After Rome and Berlin, the Ukrainian president continued his European tour in France on Sunday evening. The trip was kept secret for security reasons. He was welcomed at the Élysée by the Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, who had already received him in February.
May 3, 2023
The Russian presidency claimed to have shot down two Ukrainian drones which tried to attack the Kremlin in Moscow, denouncing an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin a few days before major military celebrations.
April 3, 2023
The leader of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigogine, carrying a Russian flag with an inscription in honor of Vladlen Tatarski, a Russian military blogger killed the day before in a bomb explosion, claims control of Bakhmout “in legal meaning” after the capture of the town hall of this city of Donbass.
31 mars 2023
With Finland, NATO completes the fastest accession process in its history. Sweden is still facing blockages from Hungary and Turkey.
28 mars 2023
The Russians claim to be near the center of Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine they have been trying to take since the summer at the cost of heavy casualties and where the Ukrainians are seeking to ‘buy time’ to prepare to a counter-offensive which, according to them, should not be long in coming.
24 mars 2023
In Moscow, military correspondents and various political figures fear an offensive from kyiv for the end of March-beginning of April, with forces estimated at around 200,000 men.
19 mars 2023
A “surprise” but perfectly orchestrated visit. For the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has crossed the official borders of Russia to go to the occupied zone. After a visit to Crimea on Saturday, the head of the Kremlin went to the heart of the martyr city of Mariupol…
December 19, 2022
The Donbass front, which is difficult for the Russian army to break through, remains defended by the Ukrainian special forces. The special correspondent of Le Figaro managed to speak with an elite unit.
November 13, 2022
The Ukrainian army announced Friday, November 11 to have entered Kherson (south) after the forced withdrawal of the Russian soldiers, which constitutes a new scathing setback for Moscow after almost nine months of war in Ukraine. “Today is a historic day. We are taking back the south of the country, we are taking back Kherson”, welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily speech published on social networks.
September 13, 2022
Surprises have followed one another for nearly seven months in Ukraine. If the invasion of Russia had been announced with foresight by American intelligence, the sequence of events will have surprised many. The Ukrainian capital was to fall quickly. Volodymyr Zelensky resisted. The powerful and massive Russian army seemed destined to advance, however slowly, carried by the force of its artillery. She had to withdraw from the Kyiv and Kharkiv region. The hasty withdrawal of enemy forces in the Kharkiv region highlights the failures of Russian logistics, which are vulnerable and unable to resist.
August 24, 2022
The war continues, particularly bloody. In the Donbass, in the east of the country, the fighting has not weakened for six months. Around Bakhmout, Siversk or Kodema, intense battles are raging. Modern weapons have in no way prevented this close combat, where artillery dominates. Western arms supplies to Ukraine, including M777 howitzers and US Himars rocket launchers, have failed to erase the Russian advantage.
April 12, 2022
Surrounded, crushed under Russian fire, the great port city should have fallen a long time ago. A last square resists it however, while the city continues to be emptied of its blood with a jerky flow of refugees reaching the free lands of Ukraine.
29 mars 2022
The front has not moved for several days. For the Russian army, the operational break – or breakdown – creates a strategic impasse. For Ukraine, resistance is synonymous with renewed hope with the prospect of a counter-offensive. “The occupiers are being pushed back from Irpin, pushed back from kyiv,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message late Monday, commenting on the fighting northwest of the capital.
February 24, 2022
Three powerful explosions tear apart the dark and icy night of kyiv. After a pause, a fourth shot rang out in the distance. A dog barks. It is 5:07 a.m. on Thursday morning, Vladimir Putin has just finished his televised speech in which he announces the launch of a military operation in Ukraine to defend the separatists in the east of the country. And, already at the gates of Europe, the phoney war that has pitted the Ukrainian army against pro-Russian soldiers supported by Moscow in the Donbass since 2014 has just turned into an all-out war.
February 2, 2022
Despite midweek announcements of Russian troop withdrawals, Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southeastern borders remain under pressure. Will they soon be crossed by a Russian surge?
