Did you miss the latest events related to the war in Ukraine? 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
The Russian Parliament on Wednesday abolished the age limit for enlisting in the army, in the midst of an offensive by Russian forces in Ukraine. “The adoption of this bill will make it possible to attract experts in sought-after specialties into the army”, underlined one of the authors of the text, MP Andrei Kartapolov, quoted on the site of the Duma, the lower house.
Until now, only citizens between the ages of 18 and 40 were allowed to enter into a first contract with the army. For foreign citizens, the window was 18 to 30 years old. From now on, it will be possible for any voluntary person who has not reached the legal retirement age, currently set at 61.5 years for men, to enlist in the army.
At the same time, Moscow will allow residents of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in southern Ukraine to apply for a Russian passport via “a simplified procedure”, according to a presidential decree published on Wednesday. The Kherson region has been entirely conquered by the Russian army since its offensive launched on February 24, while that of Zaporijjia is partly controlled by Russia.
The phrase
“We weren’t naive, we were greedy. Our industry was largely built around Russian energy, above all because it was cheap. »
By entrusting a large part of their energy supply to Russia, the Europeans have shown themselves to be “greedy” and not “naive”, said European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday in an interview with several European newspapers.
The number
Between “90 and 100 billion dollars”. This is the amount of damage to Ukrainian infrastructure, according to the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Oleksandr Kubrakov. “If we were to talk about transport, more than 300 bridges have been destroyed since the beginning of the war, among them 50 railway bridges. 6,000 railway lines have been destroyed in one way or another and nearly 20 stations or stations have been destroyed (…) more than 20,000 km² of roads have been damaged”, he detailed on the microphone. from BFMTV this morning.
The trend of the day
On the way to annexation? With the abolition of the age limit for joining the army and the simplification of passport applications, everything suggests that Vladimir Putin blames himself.
Precisely, according to the journalist of Politico Christopher Miller, “it appears that Putin intends to de facto annex parts of the Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhia occupied by Russian forces by simplifying the procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship, a process known as of “passportization”.