The Ukrainian counter-offensive is taking shape little by little. While two people died following attacks in Russia in border regions of Ukraine, kyiv says that its army is ready for a counter-offensive, even that the latter has already begun. Here is what to remember from the day of Saturday, May 27.
Two dead in strikes in Russia
Two people were killed in the village of Chebekino, located in the Belgorod region of Russia, bordering Ukraine. “One person is dead. It is a security guard in a company in the city. At the time of the strike, he was in the street”, said on Telegram the governor of the Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov. According to him, “two teenagers: a 15-year-old girl (…) and a 17-year-old boy” were also injured in this attack and “transported to a children’s hospital”. Another person was injured, but not hospitalized, he added.
Elsewhere along the Ukrainian border, Kursk region governor Roman Starovoit meanwhile reported the death of a worker following a mortar fire near the village of Plekhovo. This man was working on the “fortifications” defense forces close to Ukraine, he said. Elsewhere in Russia, two drones damaged a building from which an oil pipeline is administered in the Pskov region, in the west, its governor Mikhail Vedernikov announced earlier on Saturday. No casualties have been reported and an investigation is ongoing.
kyiv says its army is ready to launch its counter-offensive
Oleksiï Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, assured that Ukraine was ready to launch a counter-offensive, in a BBC interview (article in English). “It could happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”but the timeline is secret, he said, because kyiv has no “no right to be wrong”. This interview was interrupted by a call from Volodymyr Zelensky to the senior official, to summon him to a meeting dedicated to this question.
For his part, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak even assures, in an interview with the Guardian (article in English)that the counter-offensive of his army began. “It’s a complex process, you can’t fix it at a specific time or day, he specified. It is a continuous operation, some processes of which have already begun, such as destroying enemy supply lines or destroying their depots behind their lines. The intensity of the fighting is gradually increasing, but it will take some time.”
Two dead after the bombing of a hospital in Dnipro
The strike attributed to the Russian army on a clinic in this city left two dead and 32 injured, announced on Telegram the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergei Lysak. Rescue and search operations in the rubble have also ended, the official said.“They stop at nothing. They continue to commit their crimes against civilians every day”he denounced, referring to the Russian army.
Brussels denounces the transfer of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus
“A step towards an extremely dangerous escalation”, condemned the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, about the transfer of nuclear weapons from Russia to neighboring Belarus. Announced Thursday by the Belarusian autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, without confirmation from the Kremlin for the moment, this maneuver was received “extremely negatively” by the American president, Joe Biden, the White House said.
Ukraine demands cruise missiles from Germany
Kiev has sent an official request to Berlin for Taurus-type air-to-surface cruise missiles with a range of at least 500 km, the German Defense Ministry told AFP. The delivery of this type of weapon, capable of hitting targets far behind the current front line, and in particular on Russian territory, is still a subject of debate within the German government.
