Did you miss the latest events on the tensions in Ukraine? Do not panic, 20 minutes takes stock for you every evening at 7:30 p.m. Who did what ? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below:
news of the day
Finland has made up its mind: it will join NATO. The country’s president and prime minister, Sauli Niinistö and Sanna Marin, said they were in favor on Thursday of joining NATO “without delay”. The formal application must arrive on Sunday for this Nordic country which shares 1,300 km of border with Russia. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Berlin, Paris and Washington have assured Finland of their support.
Russia will be “forced to take retaliatory measures of both a military-technical and other nature, in order to prevent threats to its national security” in response to Finland’s NATO candidacy, the ministry retorted Foreign Affairs in a press release on Thursday. He regrets this “radical change in the country’s foreign policy”.
sentence of the day
Torture and enforced disappearances, sexual and gender-based violence, the list of Russian crimes is endless. »
This was stated by the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Emine Dzhaparova, at the opening of the debates of the Human Rights Council. She then brandished a sheet on which a little boy raped in front of his mother drew a swirl of black lines. “Russian aggression is accompanied, every day, by ever more macabre and unbearable discoveries,” added French Ambassador Jérôme Bonnafont.
The number of the day
1 billion. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has announced that it has raised 1 billion euros from its donors for Ukraine. These funds will be deployed in addition to the 2 billion euros of a “resilience fund” which had already been released at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The trend of the day
There is water in the gas this Thursday: all eyes are on Russian energy resources. Moscow is responding to Western sanctions by targeting the energy sector. Russia has imposed sanctions on more than 30 Western energy companies, most of which are owned by Gazprom Germania, the German subsidiary of the Russian gas giant, which the German state has brought under its control.
For its part, Gazprom has announced that it will stop using the gas pipeline belonging to EuRoPol GAZ for transit via Poland, in response to Western sanctions. The Russian giant also announced that the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine was down by almost a third on Thursday.
Faced with this situation, the German Minister of Energy accused Russia on Thursday of now using energy “as a weapon”. Transit of Russian gas via Ukraine to Europe’s largest economy has fallen by almost 40% in two days according to operator data.
