Ukraine "did not crack" and will triumph over Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Thursday, on the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion of his country by Russia.
On the same day, in New York, the UN General Assembly symbolically demanded the "immediate" withdrawal of Russian troops, calling for a "just and lasting" peace.
For its part, Beijing on Friday called on Russia and Ukraine to resume dialogue.
On the ground, fortified by the support of the West, with announcements Thursday by European countries of deliveries of heavy weapons and by the United States of "considerable" additional sanctions against Russia, the Ukrainians continue to put up fierce resistance to Russian forces.
But if they inflicted major setbacks on Vladimir Putin, who in turn had to give up taking Kiev, abandoned the north then north-eastern Ukraine and finally Kherson, the big city in the south, the fighting is still raging in the east, in the industrial region of Donbass which Russia absolutely wants to conquer in its entirety.
"We have not cracked, we have overcome many hardships and we will triumph. We will hold accountable all those who have brought this evil, this war on our land," declared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, determined.
He indicated that "following a new Russian attack in Kherson, more than "40,000 people are deprived of heating".
In Moscow, Vladimir Putin, for his part, went to lay flowers at the tomb of the unknown soldier on the occasion of Defender of the Fatherland Day, before talking by -10°C with soldiers on the Place red.
The day before, he had once again claimed the occupied regions of Ukraine as being Russian "historic lands" and accused Americans and Europeans of wanting to destroy Russia.
A warlike rhetoric taken up on Thursday by its Minister of Defense: "Instrumentalizing Ukraine, the West seeks to dismember Russia (...), an attempt doomed to failure".
The Chinese government has been trying for a few days to mediate, calling on Friday "all parties to support Russia and Ukraine to resume direct dialogue as soon as possible".
"Nuclear weapons should not be used," China's Foreign Ministry warned in a 12-point document released on Friday.
On the Ukrainian side, Moscow is suspected of preparing a new wave of bombardments of Ukraine on Friday, the anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict, February 24, 2022.
Since the fall, the Russian army has regularly fired salvos of missiles to break Ukraine's energy infrastructure in the middle of winter. But that campaign has lost momentum in recent months as Ukraine has strengthened its anti-aircraft defenses and repaired damaged sites.
“We have already survived this more than twenty times,” commented Kyrylo Boudanov, the head of the main intelligence directorate of the Ministry of Defense.
In one year, the Russians have carried out "about 5,000 missile strikes, nearly 3,500 air strikes, 1,100 drone attacks on various installations", or nearly 10,000 such actions in total, a senior Ukrainian military official assured Thursday. , Oleksiy Gromov.
The Ukrainian authorities also said they had observed a movement of convoys carrying military equipment north of the Chernihiv region (north), bordering Russia and Belarus, its ally.
Although tested by "the worst year of their life", the Ukrainians remain convinced that they can achieve "victory".
"I'm sure victory is ahead of us, but we don't know how long we will have to wait and how many more victims there will be," said Diana Chestakova, 23, who runs a publishing house.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez traveled to Ukraine on Thursday to show his support, after US President Joe Biden on Monday and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday.
Experts and observers expect the belligerents to each mount offensives in the weeks to come.
In this context, President Zelensky said on Thursday that he wanted to discuss the Chinese peace plan with Beijing, deeming the involvement of this close partner of Moscow "positive" but specifying that he had not seen the document.
The United States will, for its part, "put in place considerable sanctions against key sectors" in Russia, the White House said.
Meeting in India, the finance ministers of the G7 countries discussed new sanctions and increased their economic support for Kiev to 39 billion dollars.
They also urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to put in place a "credible, ambitious, fully funded (...) support program by the end of March 2023.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak must, during a videoconference, call on his G7 allies to provide artillery more quickly to the Ukrainian army and bring it longer-range weapons.
"Our priority must be to act more quickly in terms of artillery, armor and air defence", he must add.
And the EU is preparing a 10th sanctions package which it hopes to make public on Friday.
In addition, the head of the Italian navy warned that the Russians had greatly increased their naval presence in the Mediterranean, a level which had "not been observed even in the times of the Cold War".
24/02/2023 03:08:29 - Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
