Posted Oct 2, 2022, 5:03 PM
Not intimidated for a ruble. Ukraine continued its military offensive and took over, on Saturday, the Lyman railway junction, in the Donetsk region, the day after Vladimir Putin declared the annexation, accompanied by heavy threats, of four Ukrainian regions.
The Ukrainian army claims to have eliminated or taken prisoner a good part of the 5,500 Russian soldiers deployed before the encirclement of this strategic city, while Moscow announced a retreat towards “more favorable lines of defense”. The Ukrainian army also broke, on Sunday, the first line of Russian defense in the Kherson region, in Zolota Balka.
A military dynamic
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Saturday evening that his army will take over “in the coming week” other cities in this region of Donbass, probably Svatove and Kreminna. After this new setback, which could turn into a debacle if the front were quickly pushed back to the city of Lysychansk, the last city conquered by Russia, at the end of June, the debate in Moscow on responsibilities became acrimonious. Soldiers and influencers have launched unprecedented accusations of nepotism and incompetence, sometimes by name, against the military and political hierarchy.
After Vladimir Putin formalized, on Friday in Moscow, the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Kherson, on the Black Sea, Lugansk, Donetsk and Zaporidjjia (although the last two are only 60% controlled by his army), Volodymyr Zelensky reacted immediately: he signed his country’s fast-track NATO application. He had renounced the latter at the very beginning of the invasion, when compromises still seemed possible. This represents above all an act of defiance towards Moscow, since membership requires the unanimity of the thirty members of the Alliance and is only possible, according to the statutes, for countries at peace. kyiv also made it known that no negotiations would be possible with Moscow as long as Vladimir Putin was in power. Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on Sunday with Emmanuel Macron, who pledged to “work with his European partners on new sanctions” against Russia.
Putin castigates the colonialist and decadent West
The imperturbability of kyiv and its allies, with in particular the announcement by the White House of the delivery of new weapons to Ukraine at the beginning of October, is all the more notable since the Kremlin is becoming very virulent. After asserting on Wednesday that his country would defend the annexed territories “with all the weapons at its disposal” (Russian doctrine considers the use of nuclear weapons legitimate only when the existence of the nation is at stake), Vladimir Putin launched into an anti-Western diatribe on Friday.
During two-thirds of his 39-minute speech in Red Square, he castigated an “arrogant and racist” West, “ready to do anything to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to parasitize and, in effect, plunder the whole world. . They want to see us as a colony”. He also denounced the “satanicism of a Europe practicing same-sex marriage, before concluding “the victory will be ours” in front of a crowd of thousands of people waving flags.
A motion in the UN Security Council condemning the annexation could not be adopted on Friday due to the Russian veto, but was voted by ten of its members, with four abstentions, China and India, unsurprisingly, as well as Brazil and Gabon. Pope Francis on Sunday called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the “spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine, stressing the risk of a nuclear escalation of the conflict.
