Europe 1 with AFP 6:32 a.m., April 20, 2022, modified at 6:36 a.m., April 20, 2022

On the 56th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country received fighter jets to help it counter the Russian offensive in the east of the country, where the last entrenched Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol appealed desperate to the international community for rescue.

Russia, for its part, must open a new humanitarian corridor.

Europe 1 takes stock of the situation.

THE ESSENTIAL

Ukraine has received fighter jets to help counter the Russian offensive in the east of the country, where the last entrenched Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol have appealed desperately to the international community for rescue.

Russia, for its part, claims to have opened a corridor supposed to allow Ukrainian forces who have decided to surrender to leave Mariupol.

Tuesday evening, the Russian army however deplored that "nobody" had taken this humanitarian corridor.

The latter will be reopened again on Wednesday from 11 a.m. GMT, according to the same source.

The main information:

- Ukrainian soldiers appeal to the international community for help

- fighter jets sent to the Ukrainian army

- the United States and its allies are preparing new sanctions

The Desperate Call of the Mariupol Fighters

"We may be living our last days, even our last hours," said a besieged Ukrainian officer in Mariupol, calling on the international community to "extract" them, in a message posted on Facebook on Wednesday.

"The enemy is ten times more numerous than us", declared Serguiy Volyna, a commander of the 36th brigade of the national navy, entrenched in the vast steel complex of Azovstal in Mariupol (south-eastern Ukraine), besieged by Russian forces.

“We call and beg all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the extraction procedure and take us to the territory of a third country,” he added.

Fighter planes sent, new military aid in preparation

Ukraine has received fighter jets and spare parts to strengthen its air force, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday, declining to specify their number or the countries that provided the aircraft.

But these are probably Russian-made Mig-29s, which kyiv has been asking for since the start of the conflict and which a handful of Eastern European countries have.

After the shipment of Howitzer artillery pieces announced last week by Joe Biden, this announcement testifies to a change in attitude of the West, who for more than a month refused to supply Ukraine with heavy armaments, to avoid any escalation of the conflict.

And according to CNN and NBC News, the United States is set to approve a new military aid package for Ukraine amounting to $800 million, less than a week after an earlier announcement of a tranche of the same amount.

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The war in a new phase

Russia announced on Tuesday that it had carried out a dozen air strikes and missiles in eastern Ukraine, starting according to kyiv "the battle for Donbass" feared for weeks.

According to the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, this is a "new phase" of the war.

According to Moscow, "high-precision missiles" "neutralized 13 strongholds" as well as "concentrations" of troops near the key city of Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region.

The fighting "is incessant" in several cities, "it's hell", declared the Ukrainian governor of the Lugansk region, Serguiï Gaïdaï, calling on the inhabitants to flee.

United States and allies ready for new sanctions against Russia

The United States and the European Union have reached "a broad consensus on the need to increase pressure on the Kremlin, in particular through the adoption of new sanctions," the Italian government said on Tuesday evening.

The allies also agreed on the need "to increase the international isolation of Moscow," he said in a statement.

This position was taken during a virtual meeting devoted to the Russian offensive in Ukraine between US President Joe Biden and the main allies of the United States.

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Putin responsible for "war crimes", for Scholz

At the end of this videoconference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ruled that Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for "war crimes" in Ukraine which killed thousands of civilians.