After addressing the US Congress, the Bundestag and the Italian Parliament, the Ukrainian president spoke on Tuesday (March 23) before the French National Assembly, reports the news site Obozrevatel. With always the same message: the West (and therefore France) must send more weapons to kyiv, and further toughen the sanctions against Moscow, so that not only the elites, but also the Russian population as a whole feel the effects. the impact.
Because in the Ukrainian media, many believe today that the West is on the wrong track by claiming to target only Vladimir Putin and his entourage.
No, it’s not “Putin’s war”
Thus, reports the Ukrainian version of the site of Radio Svobodathe community of Ukrainian journalists has just sent an open letter to their “foreign colleagues” to call them to “not to use misleading terminology that supports the Russian disinformation campaign about the war”.
In particular, they recommend not to define the military intervention of the Russian Federation in Ukraine as a “crisis”, a “conflict”, and especially not to accompany it with the adjective “Ukrainian ( “Ukrainian crisis” Where “conflict in Ukraine”) :
It’s a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or it’s a war against Ukraine. We ask you to correctly portray Russia’s role in the war using the terms ‘Russia’s war in Ukraine’ and/or ‘Russian invasion of Ukraine’.”
The signatories also called for not using everywhere the expression of “Putin’s War”. “Even if some want to believe that this war was started exclusively because of the President of the Russian Federation, some polls carried out by different institutions show that the silent majority of Russians – around 60% – support the war.”
After a month of fighting, this support would even increase, “while the challenge decreases”, adds daily online Oukraïnska Pravda. The media then states that “46 % [des Russes] believe that the goal [de la guerre] is to defend Russia against the Ukrainian army and to prohibit the installation of NATO bases on the territory” from Ukraine.
Who will surround whom?
After four weeks of operations, there is nothing to assess in what direction the conflict will evolve. always according to Radio Svoboda, which quotes British analysts, “Russia could attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces as part of a large pincer movement in the Donbass”.
“The British consider that the aggressor will seek to close a trap on the Ukrainian units which provide defense in the east of the country, advancing from the north and the south. The Russians could cut off the supply axis for Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in the Donbass. In addition, they could cut off the escape routes from the biggest cities of the Donbass under the control of kyiv, that is, Kramatorsk, Severodonetsk, Sloviansk and others, and thus encircle large Ukrainian combat groups present in the Donbass before February 24.”
Nevertheless, “The plan of the Russian command seems too big. When one takes into account the immensity of the territory which must be seized to achieve such an encirclement, one can only ask the question: will the Russian army be able to achieve this with the forces at its disposal. It seems that she already has problems in her attempts to create this encirclement. It remains to be seen whether she could maintain it”.
However, on the Ukrainian side too, announces the daily Oukraina Moloda, efforts are being made to carry out a maneuver of the same type, although less ambitious. Indeed, in the kyiv region, “important towns like Irpine, Boutcha and Hostomel”, partly occupied by the Russians, would now be “completely surrounded by Ukrainian troops”. The Ukrainian police reportedly resumed their activities in Irpine, but “the inhabitants of Makariv, Boutcha, Irpine would still be under enemy fire”.
kyiv would therefore not be content to resist, but would even try to regain the initiative on the ground. Should the Ukrainian people then prepare for what their ordeals will last?
“The guarantee of our success is unity”
Yevhen Magda, journalist and political scientist who writes in the pages of the Lviv daily Vissoki Zamokis convinced of this, because, according to him, rather than a “Putin war”, it is a “war of independence” that it is:
And don’t expect it to end soon. We have to rely only on ourselves, although we should not hide the truth: Western military and technical assistance has radically changed the capabilities of the Ukrainian army. But the guarantee of our success is the unity of soldiers and volunteers, and the tremendous support of the armed forces by Ukrainian society.”