2024-01-05 20:17:36
Did you miss the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening at 7:30 p.m. Between the strong declarations, the advances on the front and the results of the battles, here are the main points of the day.
The fact of the day
Belgorod protects itself while awaiting possible Ukrainian strikes. The Russian authorities in the town, which borders Ukraine, offered residents who wished to evacuate on Friday. “As of today, we are ready to transport you to Stary Oskol and Gubkin [plus éloignés de la frontière], where you will be in very comfortable conditions, in warm and safe rooms. You will stay there as long as necessary,” Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on Telegram.
“I see calls on social media saying: ‘We are scared, help us get to safety.’ Of course we will! We have already displaced several families,” he said, referring to other evacuations in 2023 from smaller localities closer to the border. This unprecedented measure for a large Russian city is at odds with the efforts of the Kremlin which has always strived to give the image, since almost two years of invasion, that the conflict does not affect not directly the daily life and security of Russians. This strategy was shattered on December 30 when twenty-five people lost their lives in Belgorod in a Ukrainian attack, the deadliest civilian death toll on Russian soil since the start of the assault on Moscow on February 24, 2022.
A sign of growing concern, earlier in the day, the town of Belgorod had already called for the first time on its residents to secure their windows to “protect themselves” from possible shards of glass in the face of the Ukrainian bombings taking place there. multiply. The day before, the regional authorities had announced to postpone the start of the school year from January 9 to 19 in the city and in some surrounding areas.
Sentence of the day
A containment enclosure, and in particular a sealed enclosure, is not a museum or a free walking area. »
Renat Kartchaa, a head of the Russian atomic agency Rosenergoatom, sharply retorted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which affirmed on Wednesday that it had not recently had access to the reactor rooms of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia , occupied for two years by Moscow forces.
“Over the past two weeks, [nos experts] were not authorized to access the reactor rooms of units 1, 2 and 6″, “a first” regarding “the enclosure of a reactor of a shut down unit”, indicated the UN agency in a press release. For Renat Kartchaa, this is explained by “security” reasons. “When a reactor compartment is sealed and confined, plant personnel can only be present in emergency situations or to carry out routine work,” he continued, quoted by the Russian daily RBK.
The number of the day
29. This is the number of explosive drones launched by Russia during the night from Thursday to Friday. Only eight of them were not destroyed by Ukrainian forces. “The anti-aircraft defense shot down 21 of the 29 attack drones launched against the Mykolaiv, Kherson, Dnipro, Cherkasy, Kirovograd and Khmelnytsky regions” in the south and center of the country, the Air Force said on Telegram, specifying that these devices were, as always, devices of Iranian Shahed design. The drones did not cause major damage.
Today’s trend
Is Russia using North Korean missiles? Ukraine indicated on Friday that it could not corroborate this information at this stage following accusations to this effect from the United States. “At this stage, we have no information on the use of such missiles,” said air force spokesperson Yuri Ignat. “The United States has made a declaration to this effect, so experts will study the wreck [de missile] and then we can say whether this is the case or not. I can’t confirm yet,” he added.
The day before, the spokesperson for the American National Security Council, John Kirby, had assured, without revealing evidence, that Russian forces had launched at least one missile delivered by Pyongyang on December 30, which had crashed into a field in the Zaporizhia region (South), and several others on Tuesday during a massive attack which left six dead.
Russia has made an accelerated rapprochement with North Korea since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Although no military agreement between the two countries under Western sanctions has been announced, North Korea is already suspected of having supplied the Russian army with more than a million artillery shells intended for operations in Ukraine.
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