Movement of Zelensky near the front, Rivnopil liberated by the Ukrainian army, denunciation of torture in Russia by Joe Biden, German soldiers in Lithuania, sending of Australian armaments, child poverty in the world, Swedish humanitarian aid of 32.5 million euros to Ukraine, Russian soldiers targeted by a complaint in Germany… Le Figaro takes stock of the war in Ukraine, June 26, 2023.
Russia said Monday it had taken off two of its warplanes to meet two British fighters which it said were approaching its border over the Black Sea. “As the Russian fighters approached, the foreign warplanes turned around and moved away from the border of Russia,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. According to him, they were two British Army Typhoon fighters accompanied by an RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft.
“The Russian planes returned safely to their home airfield. There was no violation of the Russian border,” added the ministry. This type of incident involving Russian and Western aircraft has multiplied in recent months over the Black Sea but also the Baltic, against a backdrop of conflict in Ukraine. At the end of May, Moscow announced that it had intercepted four American strategic bombers over the Baltic in two different incidents in the space of a week. Russian planes had also gone to meet French, German and Polish aircraft. In April, it was an American Reaper MQ-9 drone that crashed in the Black Sea after maneuvers by Russian fighters, a crash that caused a bout of tension between Washington and Moscow.
Volodymyr Zelensky traveled on Monday to the Donetsk region, near the eastern front in Ukraine, the Ukrainian presidency said in a statement, as his army is carrying out a counter-offensive in this area and in the South. . Volodymyr Zelensky “visited units of the armed forces of the operational and strategic group of Khortytsia”, alongside the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, Oleksandre Syrsky, and decorated soldiers, according to the presidency.
Wagner’s spectacular advance towards Moscow in his rebellion on Saturday revealed “serious security problems” in Russia, his boss Yevgeny Prigojine said on Monday, saying his men had traveled 780 kilometers with little resistance. “The march has brought to light serious security concerns in the country,” Wagner’s leader said in his first audio message since the uprising ended on Saturday night. He did not reveal his whereabouts, while the Kremlin assured that he would leave for Belarus, without however saying when.
The leader of the paramilitary group Wagner also said Monday that his men had received support from the inhabitants of the localities crossed during his rebellion in Russia. “Civilians came to meet us with Russian flags and Wagner emblems, they were happy when we arrived and passed by them,” he said.
The Ukrainian army said on Monday that it had liberated Rivnopil, a locality in the Donetsk region located on the southern front, in the area where Kiev troops have made slight progress in recent weeks. “The defense forces have taken over Rivnopil. We are moving forward,” Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said on Telegram. Located about 100 km southwest of Donetsk, Rivnopil is in an area where Ukrainian forces are on the offensive and have retaken several villages after nearly two weeks of fighting.
Russia admitted to fighting in the area on June 16, two weeks after the launch of kyiv’s counter-offensive aimed at reconquering all of the territories occupied by Moscow. Supported by Western military aid, the Ukrainian army has at this stage taken over a dozen localities, most of them on the southern front where it is trying to break through the Russian defences, the main lines still being several kilometers away.
US President Joe Biden particularly denounced this Monday the acts of torture committed by the Russian authorities on their territory and in Ukraine, on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
“Torture destroys lives, families and populations. Yet every day individuals around the world are subjected to these horrific violations of their rights and human dignity,” he said in a statement.
He notably referred to “evidence of appalling violence on the part of members of the Russian forces” in Ukraine, invaded by Moscow in February 2022, guilty according to him “of torture to force him to cooperate with the occupation authorities and during interrogations , such as beatings, electrocutions, mock executions and the use of sexual violence”. “On Russian territory itself, reports of torture in places of detention are commonplace, including against activists and opponents of government policies.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday announced new military aid to Ukraine, including the shipment of 28 M113 armored vehicles and 105mm howitzers for an amount of 74 million USD (67.9 million euros). ). “We support international efforts to ensure the failure of Putin’s aggression and to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Anthony Albanese. The number of howitzers that will be delivered has not been communicated. However, this military aid does not include additional Hawkei and Bushmaster armored vehicles, vehicles requested by kyiv.
Sweden, for its part, announced on Monday new humanitarian aid of 380 million crowns (32.5 million euros) for Ukraine, devoted to basic necessities. “We know there will be great humanitarian needs,” Trade Minister Johan Forsell said, citing Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russian forces, as well as the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. This aid package is primarily aimed at the “most urgent needs”, he said: food, water, care products and various support for civil society.
Germany is ready to station some 4,000 troops in Lithuania, up from around 800 currently, to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced on Monday. “Germany is ready to permanently deploy a robust brigade in Lithuania,” Boris Pistorius said in Vilnius, according to a recording sent by his ministry.
The preconditions for this deployment are “corresponding infrastructure” on site, in particular barracks and depots, as well as “compatibility with NATO plans”, he specified. “It involves considerable effort and we have agreed that the installation of the brigade will follow step by step, as the infrastructure develops,” the minister said. Germany currently leads a NATO combat group stationed in the Baltic state and has some 800 soldiers from the Bundeswehr, the German army, there. Added to this is a brigade stationed in Germany but mobilized for a rapid engagement in Lithuania.
Denmark will withdraw US F-16 fighter jets from its fleet as soon as 2025, two years earlier than planned, the defense minister announced on Monday, paving the way for a donation of some of these planes to Ukraine. . “F-35s can be phased in and made operational sooner than expected. Therefore, we are now in a situation where the F-16s can be withdrawn from service earlier than planned,” acting Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told DR public television.
According to a document sent to Parliament and consulted by DR, these planes should have flown until 2027. The F-16s “will remain in Denmark until 2024”, however declared the minister. Denmark is currently finalizing preparations for training on its soil of Ukrainian pilots on F-16s which it hopes to begin before the end of the summer. “We will also consider a specific donation of Danish F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and how many,” said Troels Lund Poulsen. The Danish Air Force has 43 F-16s, of which around 30 are operational. The Nordic country recently began receiving its first fifth-generation F-35s to replace them.
Wagner’s aborted mutiny shows that the war in Ukraine is “splitting” Russian power, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday, saying political instability in a nuclear power like Russia was “not a good thing”. “The Wagner monster created by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is biting its creator,” he said ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
“What happened over the weekend shows that the war against Ukraine is cracking Russian power and affecting its political system,” said Josep Borrell. “We see the disastrous consequences of the war of Russian aggression on Putin’s system of power. We see that the Russian leaders are turning more and more against themselves,” commented German Minister Annalena Baerbock. “These events raise many questions and we must remain cautious. There are a lot of gray areas. But they show cracks, fractures, flaws within the Russian system,” added his French counterpart Catherine Colonna.
A quarter of the world’s children are expected to live in poverty this year as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has driven up food and energy prices, the NGO KidsRights warned on Monday. The Kidsrights ranking, based on figures provided by UN agencies, also shows that children are at risk from climate change and the health impact of the Covid pandemic.
“All of this amounts to an extremely serious ‘polycrisis’, as children’s rights and livelihoods continue to be torn apart by global tensions,” said KidsRights, based in the Netherlands. The “KidsRights Index” is the only annual ranking that measures how children’s rights are respected. Sweden, Finland and Iceland are the highest ranked among 193 countries. Chad, South Sudan and Afghanistan are the worst countries for children, according to the NGO.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further heightened great-power rivalry and made Switzerland (host of many international organizations) a hub for Russian and Chinese espionage, according to the Intelligence Service. Swiss intelligence. “Russia has destroyed the rules-based peace order in Europe,” the Confederation Intelligence Service (SRC) soberly notes in its annual report published on Monday. The SRC is also in charge of counterintelligence.
A blast that means that “international forums for the promotion of peace and collective security such as the UN and the OSCE have again lost their effectiveness and a new stable world order is not on the horizon”, analyze Swiss spy services. Added to this is the trend “towards a bipolar world order, marked by the systemic rivalry between the United States and China”. And therefore “foreign, mainly Russian and Chinese, espionage activities still pose a high threat to Switzerland”.
Two NGOs announced on Monday to file a complaint in Germany, in the name of the principle of “universal jurisdiction”, against four Russian soldiers whom a Ukrainian woman accuses of having murdered her husband before raping her. The Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group (ULAG) and the European Center for Constitution and Human Rights (ECCHR) have lodged a complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office “in support of a Ukrainian woman victim of sexual violence”, which joins itself to the complaint, announced the two NGOs in a press release.
“Directed against four members of the Russian military, including two senior officials, the complaint alleges that these individuals are responsible for the arbitrary killing of the survivor’s husband and the acts of extreme sexual violence they committed against him.” , specify the two organizations. “The attack on the survivor and her family took place a few weeks after the start of the large-scale invasion (February 24, 2022), when Russian troops occupied their village in the Kiev region,” they describe. .
