2023-09-08 23:30:00
A confession that speaks volumes. On Friday September 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that Russia was currently managing to slow down the counter-offensive. For the Ukrainian president, it is because of the “slowness” of Western deliveries while kyiv requests long-range weapons.
The president also stressed that time was against Ukraine, with Russia banking on a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election to weaken American support for kyiv. He again called for more guns, longer range, and faster. And new sanctions against Moscow.
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“The longer it is, the more people suffer […] If we are not in the sky and Russia is there, they are stopping us from the sky. They are stopping our counter-offensive,” he declared during a conference in kyiv. According to him, “the processes are becoming more complicated and slower when it comes to economic sanctions against Moscow or the supply of weapons” from the West.
Ukraine has complained in particular for months about the slowness of negotiations on the delivery of F-16 fighters. Several dozen of these American aircraft will ultimately be delivered by European countries, but the crews must now be trained for months.
“Our soldiers continue to advance”
The Ukrainian counter-offensive launched in June came up against powerful defense lines built by the Russians, including minefields and anti-tank booby traps.
However, a breakthrough has emerged in recent weeks in the South, which could allow the Ukrainian army to advance to cut Russian lines of communication between the north and Crimea, one of its objectives.
“Despite the fierce resistance of the enemy, our soldiers continue to advance,” Ukrainian army commander Valery Zaluzhny told Allied Commander NATO Operations in Europe by telephone. American General Christopher Cavoli.
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American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in kyiv on Wednesday and Thursday, judged the “significant progress” of the offensive “very, very encouraging”. He promised a billion dollars in new aid. Washington also confirmed the supply of depleted uranium shells to give “momentum” to the offensive.
Russian leaders are “counting on the American elections” in 2024 to obtain a drop in this support in the event of a Republican victory, Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Friday, observing that there were “voices within the Republican Party which say that support for Ukraine must be reduced.”
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Pseudo-elections
In addition, Russia continued its bombardments of Ukrainian cities. Ukraine mourned the death of four people on Friday. Three civilians were killed in Odradokamianka in the southern Kherson region, according to Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko. In Kryvyi Rig, the birthplace of President Volodymyr Zelensky in the south of the country, a bombardment hit an administrative building killing a policeman, according to relief.
Kiev has also denounced the local elections organized by Moscow in the regions that came under its control, and which it claims to have annexed in the same way as Crimea in 2014. “The pseudo-elections carried out by Russia in the temporarily occupied territories are worthless”, underlined the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denouncing a “gross violation” of its sovereignty.
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On Telegram, the Ukrainian mayor in exile of Melitopol (occupied zone of Zaporizhia) reported “two powerful explosions” at the Berdiansk high school, on the edge of the Sea of Azov, where “the enemy had located one of the polling stations”.
Paris denounces “sham elections”
France condemned on Friday “the organization by Russia of sham elections on Ukrainian territory, and in particular in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, as well as in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson”.
These “so-called elections” are “devoid of any legitimacy and are being held in territories that Russia illegally occupies,” continued French diplomacy in a press release, which “will not recognize the “results”.
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The Ukrainian Crimean peninsula, with the city of Sevastopol, was annexed in 2014 by Russia after a referendum that almost the entire international community refused to recognize. The four regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson suffered the same fate – referendum and annexation – in 2022.
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