Joe Biden on Thursday made a series of statements about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including $800 million in new military aid. This envelope includes “heavy artillery weapons, dozens of howitzers, 144,000 ammunition as well as drones”, he detailed from the White House. “Vladimir Putin will never succeed” in occupying Ukraine, promised the Democratic leader. The American president also considered “questionable that Vladimir Putin controls Mariupol”. He adds: “There is still no evidence that Mariupol is completely lost. »
In parallel, Russia on Thursday banned entry into its territory to 29 American politicians, media personalities and businessmen in retaliation for sanctions imposed by Washington against Moscow for its offensive against Ukraine. Among the people targeted by this measure, the list of which was published by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, include in particular the leader of the Web giant Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and the American vice-president, Kamala Harris.
The spokesman for American diplomacy, Ned Price, said Thursday that he considered it an “honor” to be targeted by the new Russian sanctions, which notably prohibit him from entering Russia. “I must say it is nothing short of an honor to incur the wrath of a government that lies to its own people, mistreats its neighbors and seeks to create a world where independence and freedom are in jeopardy. Mr. Price told reporters.
Putin welcomes Mariupol attack
Joe Biden’s statement comes as Vladimir Putin welcomed the Russian offensive in Mariupol on Thursday April 21, judging that the “liberation” of this port city was “a success”. “The end of the work of liberating Mariupol is a success,” Vladimir Putin told his Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, after telling him that an assault on the Azovstal site – where the last Ukrainian soldiers – was “not appropriate” and that “the area should be besieged in such a way that not a single fly would pass”.
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In Mariupol, the last Ukrainian fighters still refuse to surrender to the Russian military, whose objective is to make them capitulate by surrendering their arms and capturing all those who defend them. The two battalions of Ukrainian soldiers – the 36e Ukrainian army battalion and the Azov battalion – which are still holding out, said they were ready to leave the city, but not under Russian conditions, and not without guaranteeing the safety of the civilians entrenched with them in the steel and metallurgical plant from Azovtal. “We are ready to leave Mariupol with the help of a third party”, armed, “in order to save the people who have been entrusted to us”, indicated, in the early hours of Thursday, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov battalion. , on Telegram.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called on Thursday for the establishment of an emergency humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from this gigantic steelworks, the last island of resistance in the port of Mariupol besieged by Russian forces. The civilians, “refugees in large numbers” in the steelworks, “do not trust the (Russian) troops”, wrote the ministry on its Twitter account.
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Russia, which has issued several ultimatums to the defenders of Mariupol, is determined to take this port, which would allow it to connect Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the pro-Russian separatist republics of Donbass. The humanitarian corridor, which had in principle been negotiated to allow the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol on Wednesday, “did not work”, declared in the evening the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk. She blamed the Russians for violating the ceasefire and blocking the buses, while Moscow accused “the kyiv authorities of having cynically scuttled this humanitarian operation”.
In addition, Kyiv has given details on its urgent need for financial support. Ukraine needs $7 billion a month to compensate for economic losses caused by Russia’s war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday. “And we will need hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstruction,” he said during a roundtable discussion on aid to Ukraine at IMF and EC meetings. World Bank in Washington.