Europe 1 with AFP 07:02, May 30, 2022
As the 100th day of the war in Ukraine approaches, kyiv has announced that it has regained ground from the Russians in the Kherson region in the east of the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to address European leaders gathered in Brussels on Monday for an extraordinary summit.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to speak to European leaders gathered in Brussels on Monday, kyiv announced that it had regained ground in Russian hands near Kherson, in the east of the country.
"Kherson, hold on, we are close!" Says the Ukrainian general staff on its Facebook page.
In its update published overnight from Sunday to Monday, the Ukrainian army claims to be advancing in this region, near the villages of Andriyivka, Lozove and Bilohirka.
Monday morning's bulletin did not give any details about Kherson, but indicated that the Russian forces had sent special forces to Mykolayiv, the neighboring town, "with the intention of carrying out offensive actions to recover lost positions".
On the Russian side, no comment was made at first regarding these assertions by kyiv.
This Ukrainian offensive on Kherson comes as the new authorities of the city, appointed by the Kremlin, have already expressed the wish to be attached to Russia, which has announced that it will allow residents to apply for a passport. Russian via "a simplified procedure".
If Kherson fell back into the hands of kyiv, it would be a strong symbolic advance, this region entirely conquered by the Russian army since its offensive launched on February 24.
A new outbreak of sanctions against Russia
This Monday, new sanctions against Moscow will be studied at the extraordinary summit to be held in Brussels in the presence of European leaders.
In addition to the oil embargo, the sanctions package aims to exclude Russian banks from the Swift international financial system.
President Zelensky's intervention, by videoconference at this summit, comes the day after his highly publicized visit on Sunday to Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, in the north-east of the country.
An unprecedented release since the Russian invasion at the end of February.
"We will defend our land to the end. They have no chance," he said, meeting soldiers in the field, in bulletproof vests and fatigues, and visiting the rubble of destroyed buildings. in Kharkov.
An initiative taken while attempts to mediate between Moscow and kyiv are at a standstill.
Again this weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging him to start "serious direct negotiations" with kyiv.
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Russian forces, which withdrew from the Kharkiv region, continued their advance this weekend towards the key cities of Severodonetsk, relentlessly shelled, and Lyssychansk, its twin city, in the Donbass.
Located on either side of the Siversky Donets River, they are threatened with encirclement by Russian forces and pro-Russian separatists, who seek to establish complete control over the Donbass mining basin.
The leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, had claimed on Saturday evening to have taken control of Severodonetsk, a city which had 100,000 inhabitants before the war.
The mayor of Severodonetsk, Olexander Stryuk, has warned of the worsening health situation in his city, which has been deprived of electricity for more than two weeks and emptied of its inhabitants.
The "constant bombardments" greatly complicate the supply, especially of drinking water, to the thousands of inhabitants still there.
While Ukraine, a major agricultural power, can no longer export its cereals due to the blocking of its ports, Vladimir Putin assured, during his conversation with his French and German peers, that his country was "ready" to help a "unimpeded" export of grain from Ukraine.
The Hungarian blockade
This Sunday in Brussels, representatives of the Twenty-Seven examined a new proposal which would temporarily exempt a key oil pipeline for Hungary from a progressive EU embargo on Russian oil, in an attempt to lift the blockage on their 6th package sanctions against Moscow.
These new sanctions are currently blocked by Hungary, a landlocked country without access to the sea and dependent on the oil sent from Russia by the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies it with 65% of its consumption.
NATO Deputy Chief Mircea Geoana said on Sunday that the Alliance was no longer bound by its former commitments to Moscow not to deploy its forces in Eastern Europe.
In the Founding Act on relations between NATO and Russia, signed 25 years ago, the Russians had "undertaken not to attack the neighbors, that is what they are doing, and hold regular consultations with NATO, which they are not doing,” Geoana said.