A besieged city, nuclear weapons and a pact with France

Have you missed the latest war in Ukraine? 20 minutes Takes stock for you every evening at 7:30pm. Between strong announcements, progress on the front and battle results, here are the highlights of the day.

Fact of the day

On Thursday, a bomb exploded in a shopping center in the Russian city of Belgorod, about 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. The governor of the region, which borders Ukraine, said at least six people may have been killed and 20 people, including five children, injured in the strike.

In Ukraine, the situation is particularly worsening in the war-torn Donbas city of Avdivka, where the position of Ukrainian defenders is becoming increasingly precarious in the face of Russian forces that launched an offensive in October to encircle the city. “The 3rd Assault Brigade confirms that it has been urgently redeployed” as reinforcements to the area, the unit indicated in a telegram message on Thursday titled “Casualty hell”.

This brigade claimed to be counter-attacking the neighbors conquered by the Russians, estimating the opposing forces in its area at “about seven brigades” or several thousand men, as reinforcements continued to arrive.

Today’s statement

” Information relating to a serious threat to national security »

This is the sibiline content of a press release signed Wednesday by the head of the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, addressed to his colleagues in the US Congress. This development, which was alarming to say the least, spread like wildfire and fueled speculation in the United States. A White House official is going to Congress this Thursday to brief elected officials on the mysterious affair. It must be said that it is very rare for the intelligence community to communicate publicly about its current files, unless there is a direct threat to the general public.

Asked by AFP, a source close to the matter indicated the threat was “serious” but not “urgent”. Citing unidentified sources, several American media outlets speak of “extremely alarming” Russian military capabilities. ABC News first reported that Russia plans to launch nuclear weapons into space against satellites. Nuclear, the word is out.

For its part, Moscow described the information as “malicious” and “baseless”, seeing it as a maneuver by the American executive to push Ukraine through an envelope, blocked for months in Congress.

Number of days

486. According to estimates released on Thursday by the World Bank, the UN, the European Union and the Ukrainian government, the minimum amount of money Ukraine will need to rebuild after two years of war is in the billions of dollars. The previous valuation published in March 2023 was $411 billion.

The most significant losses are concentrated in the regions of Donetsk (east), Kharkiv (northeast), Lugansk (east), Zaporizhia (south), Kherson (south), all near the current front line, and Kiev (north).

Attitude

Emmanuel Macron will sign a bilateral security agreement with his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, a sign of “French determination to defeat the Russian war of aggression” in Ukraine that will soon enter its third year, the Elysee announced Thursday.

Our file on the war in Ukraine

The agreement will be signed at the Elysee Palace at 6:45 p.m., after a stopover by the Ukrainian president in Berlin for a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Germany is also negotiating a security agreement with Kiev, the conclusion of which seems imminent. “Our determination (to support Ukraine) is there, not weakening and not weakening,” the adviser to the French head of state asserted. “We are also determined to defeat this bet that Russia is making”, which is “banking on our exhaustion in the long term”, he asserted.