The fighting continues on the 197th day of the war, as Ukraine claims positions near Kherson and Russia, through the voice of Vladimir Putin, repeats that “it is impossible” to do without it on the plan. international. The Security Council meeting on Wednesday recalled the horrors of the conflict: it was about the forced displacement of Ukrainian children to Russia, especially orphans.
On Wednesday, September 7, before the UN Security Council, the UN Under-Secretary General for Human Rights, Ilze Brands, was serious. She reported “credible accusations” of “forcible transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian-occupied territory or to the Russian Federation itself”. And to add: “We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to children who are not in the care of their parents, and that these children are eligible for adoption by Russian families,” she added.
These statements confirm the accusations made by the United States, at the origin of this Security Council meeting with Albania, which speaks of the forced displacement of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia. These operations could take place as Moscow has simplified procedures for access to nationality in order to increase its control of southern Ukraine. Vladimir Putin hopes to rally him to Russian territory. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassili Nebenzia, has rejected the accusations as a whole, which he considers “unfounded”. He speaks of “legends”.
The Ukrainian army claims, without naming them, the resumption of several localities in the Kharkiv region, when a meeting of defense ministers of the allied countries opens Thursday in Germany to organize their support for Ukrainian military capabilities. . “This week we have good news from the Kharkiv region,” President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted in his evening video address broadcast on social media.
These advances on the northeastern front are part of a counter-offensive in southern Ukraine. Observers had reported in recent days of a breakthrough of Ukrainian forces in the region, without this being verified by an independent source. The Kharkiv region has been partly occupied by the Russian army since February 24 and the start of the invasion. The city of the same name, the second largest in Ukraine, is regularly targeted by deadly bombardments. Moscow has not, for the time being, managed to seize it.
Vladimir Putin speaks of “nonsense” and “sanctions fever”. Tension rose a notch higher on Wednesday between Moscow and the EU over Russian gas deliveries since the Russian president threatened to stop all deliveries of hydrocarbons in the event of price caps, a project relaunched the same day by Brussels. The President of the European Commission had called during the day not to enrich Russia and not to “finance this atrocious war against Ukraine” by continuing to buy its gas at insane prices. She also welcomed the reduction in European dependence: “At the start of the war, Russian gas by pipeline represented 40% of all the gas imported (by the EU). Today, it does not represents only 9%”.
Vladimir Putin has also attacked Europeans over Ukrainian grain exports. Blocked for several months in the south of Ukraine, the cereals have been the subject of a routing plan under the aegis of the United Nations and under the mediation of Turkey. The Russian head of state assured that these exports went mainly to European countries and not to poor countries, which, according to him, creates a risk of “humanitarian catastrophe”. Ukraine immediately refuted these accusations, retorting that two-thirds of deliveries went to countries in Africa and Asia.
“No matter how much some would like to isolate Russia, it is impossible to do so,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday (September 7th) at an Asian-focused economic forum in Vladivostok (Russia’s Far East). . The new coronavirus pandemic “has been replaced by new global challenges, which threaten the whole world. I mean the sanctions fever of the West”, he said.
The Russian president denounced “the stubborn refusal of the Western elites to see the facts” and “the elusive domination of the United States” in the implementation of heavy sanctions against Russia following the offensive carried out in Ukraine since the end of February. “Irreversible changes have taken place in the entire system of international relations,” he noted. Despite a shower of Western sanctions, the master of the Kremlin asserted that Russia “has lost nothing and will not lose anything”. “There is some polarization going on, but I think it will only be beneficial,” he added.
Vladimir Putin has also denied claims that Moscow is using energy as a “weapon” against Europe, days after Russian gas supplies via the Nord Stream pipeline were halted. Westerners claim that Moscow uses energy as a weapon. “Another nonsense! What weapon do we use? We supply as much as necessary according to the requests made” by the importing countries, he declared. Before launching: “give us a turbine and tomorrow we will relaunch Nord Stream.”
