The Eiffel Tower soon adorned with blue and yellow. The famous Parisian monument will be in the colors of the flag of Ukraine this Thursday, February 23, in order to show its support for the country tested by the first year of the Russian offensive on its territory.
“Thursday evening, the Eiffel Tower will light up in the colors of Ukraine in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. A year after the start of the war, Paris reaffirms its unwavering support for the Ukrainian people,” the capital’s PS mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted earlier this week.
At the start of the war, on February 25, 2022, the Eiffel Tower had already been painted in blue and yellow to show its solidarity with kyiv, when Russia had just begun its offensive. At the same time, many municipal buildings in France had chosen to hoist the yellow and blue flag of Ukraine, to communicate the same message.
A lasting offensive
On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, claiming that it wanted to orchestrate a “genocide” of the Russian-speaking populations of its eastern regions. But the offensive, which was to be lightning, quickly bogged down and, in the spring of 2022, the head of the Kremlin had to give up taking kyiv, withdrawing his forces from northern Ukraine.
At the end of the summer, faced with a Ukrainian army reinforced by very significant Western military aid, the Russians had to abandon the northeast, then in November the city of Kherson in the south. Since then, the front has been largely stable, although Russian forces have redoubled their efforts in the east, particularly with a view to taking the town of Bakhmout, which is largely destroyed today.
Observers and experts believe that Ukraine and Russia want to launch major offensives in late winter or early spring. Russian forces have suffered heavy casualties, although these have not been officially acknowledged, and Moscow is now portraying the war as a Western-orchestrated proxy conflict against Russia.