strong explosions in Kyiv and other cities of the country

2023-05-18 06:01:14

Cover image: This photograph released by Maxar Technologies on May 17, 2023 shows an aerial view of burning buildings in Bakhmout, eastern Ukraine on May 15. HANDOUT / AFP

• Several explosions sounded Thursday at dawn in kyiv and in other regions of Ukraine, where the population was asked to stay in the shelters, according to the military authorities. The military also reported attacks by “cruise missile” in the Vinnytsia region in the center of the country, and local media reported explosions in Khmelnytskyi, about 100 kilometers further west. An air alert is in effect across Ukraine.
• The Ukrainian army reported further advances near Bakhmout. “Today our units penetrated up to 500 meters in some parts of the Bakhmout front”, military spokesman Serhi Cherevaty told Ukrainian television on Wednesday, according to Reuters. Moreover, three people, including a child, died in a Russian shelling in Kherson Oblastselon Kiev.
• Belarus partially restored controls on its border with Russia on Wednesday. According to Sergueï Aleinik, the Belarusian Foreign Minister, the introduction of border controls aims to prevent the entry of third-country nationals into Belarus, before the implementation of an intergovernmental agreement on the mutual recognition of visas.
• The agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea has been extended for two months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday. Ukraine said on Wednesday “grateful” towards Turkey and the UN, sponsors of the negotiations with Russia.
• Li Hui, the Chinese envoy sent by Beijing to discuss a “political settlement” of the conflict, present in kyiv on Wednesday, was able to speak with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba. The latter says he insisted with the emissary on the “respect for territorial integrity” of Ukraine, while acknowledging the role « important » from China.
• After the National Assembly at the end of March, the Senate on Wednesday called on the government to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide, this famine caused at the beginning of the 1930s in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities, at the origin of the death of several million people. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed a “historic decision of the French Senate”.
• British and German defense ministers said Wednesday in Berlin thathe was coming back ” to the White House “ to decide on a possible delivery to kyiv of F-16 combat aircraft. Poland is unable to supply Ukraine with F-16 planes, its president said.
• Increasingly close since the start of the war in Ukraine, Iran and Russia on Wednesday signed an agreement to open a North-South trade route aimed at circumventing traditional maritime routes and international sanctions. Under discussion since the early 2000s, this bilateral agreement concerns the construction of a 164 kilometer long railway line in northeastern Iran.

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