Did you miss the latest events on the tensions in Ukraine? Do not panic, 20 minutes updates you every night at 7:30 p.m. Who did what? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below:
news of the day
The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, indicated on Thursday that the United States had not given a positive response to the “main” Russian demand, namely the end of NATO enlargement, especially to Ukraine. Russia also demanded a return to its deployments on the 1997 borders. If Moscow coldly welcomed this rejection, the two camps kept the door open to dialogue.
“There is no positive answer to the main question” in the documents received by Moscow from Washington, but “there is a reaction that gives hope for the start of a serious conversation on secondary issues Sergei Lavrov said in a statement.
Among the glimmers of hope, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the “constructive” diplomatic exercise the day before in Paris, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators having met for the first time in months, under Franco-German aegis , to talk about the conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists.
“The good news is that the advisers have agreed to meet in Berlin in two weeks, which means that at least for the next two weeks Russia is likely to stay on a diplomatic track,” Dmytro Kouleba said.
sentence of the day
We cannot say that our points of view were taken into account”
“You cannot say that our views were taken into account,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in reaction to the negative response from the United States. Moscow sees NATO’s presence in its neighborhood as an existential threat fueling the risk of an escalation in Ukraine. It therefore wants to redesign the European security architecture resulting from the end of the Cold War.
The trend of the day
French experts were expected in Romania on Thursday for the possible deployment of troops within the framework of NATO, the French Minister for the Armed Forces announced in Bucharest. “A mission of experts from the ministry is arriving today to study the parameters” of such an operation, Florence Parly said in a brief statement to the press, after a meeting with her Romanian counterpart. Vasile Dancu.
For his part, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, renewed his call to help his country with defensive weapons and financial support. “If I’m a big believer in ‘soft power’, now is the time to use ‘hard power’,” he said. “A strong Ukraine is in itself the best deterrent”, insisted Dmytro Kouleba, praising in passing the Danish commitment at his side.
The diplomacy of the Scandinavian country announced Thursday its decision to allocate nearly 80 million euros in aid to Ukraine. “Each country can do something if it has the political will”, insisted the Ukrainian minister, criticizing the countries which “find excuses to do nothing”. Kiev has notably criticized Germany in recent weeks for its lack of momentum, in particular to supply it with weapons.
