2024-01-26 18:02:36
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
The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, wrote this Friday that as it stands, any vote on new funding for aid to Ukraine as well as for strengthening the border with Mexico was “stillborn”. This comment comes at a time when, according to American media, Donald Trump is putting pressure on Republican elected officials to block the budget requests of his rival, Democratic President Joe Biden.
“If the rumors about the content of the bill [actuellement débattu au Sénat, l’autre chambre du Congrès] are true, he would have been stillborn even before his arrival before the House of Representatives,” assured Mike Johnson in a letter to American deputies. This letter is another negative signal on the outcome of the already very complicated negotiations in the American Congress, which is made up of the Senate, currently with a Democratic majority, and the House, dominated by the Republicans.
Joe Biden is calling for a budgetary increase of some $100 billion to meet pressing needs, first and foremost aid to Ukraine, for which the United States is the leading supplier of military equipment. Under pressure from Republicans, the subject is now linked in discussions to immigration policy, a leading subject of Donald Trump’s campaign.
Sentence of the day
Ukrainian army intelligence knew that we were transporting 65 servicemen [ukrainiens] on board. They shot him, by mistake or on purpose, but they did it. »
For Vladimir Putin, there is no doubt that kyiv shot down the military plane which knowingly transported prisoners of war. But Moscow has provided no evidence supporting the allegations while Ukrainian authorities have expressed doubts about the presence of Ukrainian prisoners on board. Moreover, the Kremlin rejected this Friday the idea of publishing proof of the presence of Ukrainian prisoners on board the plane. “The investigators are working, I have nothing to say on this subject,” his spokesperson Dmitri Peskov told journalists who questioned him on this subject.
The number of the day
77. This is the number of bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in combat who have been repatriated, kyiv announced this Friday. “The remains of 77 Ukrainian defenders were returned to government-controlled territory,” said the Ukrainian coordination center for prisoners of war. “This repatriation had been planned for a long time,” he said. This procedure, which therefore does not seem linked to the crash of the Russian plane, nevertheless occurs at a time when the question of soldiers in the hands of Moscow’s forces and their exchange is particularly sensitive.
Today’s trend
Tension has been rising for several days between France and Russia over Ukraine. Paris has identified a “coordinated maneuver by Russia” to disseminate false information involving France, such as the alleged presence of French “mercenaries” fighting for kyiv, the Ministry of the Armed Forces announced this Friday in a press release. Since the start of the conflict, France has been “the target of a Russian disinformation campaign”, which “intensified” in mid-January after “the reaffirmation of support [français] to Ukraine” by Emmanuel Macron, states this text. “We cannot let Russia win,” said the French president, announcing new arms deliveries to kyiv.
The day after these statements, on January 17, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have struck a building in Kharkiv housing “mercenaries”, “mostly […] French citizens”. Sixty fighters were “eliminated” and 20 injured, Moscow assured. “Crude manipulation,” the Quai d’Orsay then denounced. “Faced with the intensification of French military aid to Ukraine, we expect this Russian intoxication maneuver to continue,” warned the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu in this press release, specifying that Paris was strengthening “ its system for monitoring these manipulations”.
Russian diplomatic spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded this Friday by criticizing Emmanuel Macron’s “militarist frenzy”. Addressing the French president directly, she said: “You will not be able to stop us on the path to victory! » “Paris stubbornly refuses to understand that the increase in military aid to the Zelensky regime leads to a prolongation of the Ukrainian crisis,” added Maria Zakharova.
#delay #American #aid #FrancoRussian #tensions