Did you miss the latest events on the tensions in Ukraine? Do not panic, 20 Minutes updates you every night at 7:30 p.m. Who did what? Who said what? Where are we ? The recap of Tuesday, May 31.
news of the day
Part of the hinge city of Severodonetsk is now controlled by the Russians. Kremlin forces entered the city of Donbass, kyiv’s last stronghold in the region. The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believes that the Russians have control of the northeast and southeast of the city and are continuing to advance. This city of some 100,000 inhabitants before the war is now largely destroyed and deserted. Severodonetsk has been bombarded for weeks by Russian forces and pro-Russian separatists fighting alongside them. Dozens of civilians lost their lives there.
sentence of the day
Our objective is always the same: to stop the war without participating”
The French president spoke after a European summit in Brussels, devoted to support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. Emmanuel Macron welcomed the EU’s decision to cut its imports of Russian oil by two-thirds by the end of the year while repeating that Paris will not participate in an armed conflict.
The number of the day
11. This is the number of years in prison to which two Russian soldiers were sentenced on Tuesday. Alexander Bobykin and Alexander Ivanov were found guilty of “violation of the laws and customs of war”, following a trial which began in mid-May near the city of Poltava. They are accused of having bombarded with multiple missile launchers two villages in the Kharkiv region, in the northeast of the country, charges they assumed.
The trend of the day
If not on everyone’s lips, cereals are on everyone’s lips. Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday that he had proposed to Vladimir Putin the vote of a resolution at the UN. The latter would make it possible to lift the Russian blockade of the port of Odessa and allow the export of Ukrainian cereals which are blocked there.
According to Moscow, Western countries are responsible for the grain shortage. They “created a ton of artificial problems by closing their ports to Russian ships, by removing logistics and financial chains,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday, who believes that the Western camp is “com ‘on food security’. It is not certain that arbitration by the United Nations is sufficient to unblock the situation.