The Ukrainian president evokes a “hell” to describe the Donbass, ground of the Russian offensive for several weeks. Vladimir Putin’s forces are increasing the pressure in this region of the east of the country, where certain cities are being bombarded relentlessly.

The United States has released a massive new aid envelope to kyiv, in particular to help it equip itself. This contribution is considered by Volodymyr Zelensky as an investment by his partners for the security of the West in the face of Moscow’s ambitions.

The US Congress released on Thursday a gigantic envelope of 40 billion dollars to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. And the G7 finance ministers have started to count the billions that each country could pour into Kyiv.

“For our partners, it’s not just spending or a donation, reacted the Ukrainian president in his video address on the night of Thursday to Friday. It’s their contribution to their own security because the protection of Ukraine means their own protection against new wars and crises that Russia may provoke.”

The new American aid should in particular allow Ukraine to equip itself with armor and strengthen its anti-aircraft defense, at a time when Russia is concentrating its efforts in the east and south of the country after having failed to take kyiv and Kharkiv, in the North.

Moscow aims for the total conquest of Donbass, a Russian-speaking region partially controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists. “Ukrainian armed forces continue to make progress in liberating the Kharkiv region. But the occupiers are trying to further increase the pressure in the Donbass. This is hell, and this is not an exaggeration,” he said. said the Ukrainian president.

Russian bombardments left 12 dead and 40 injured on Thursday in Severodonetsk, in the Lugansk region (east), according to local governor Serguiï Gaïdaï. He said most of the shots hit apartment buildings, and the death toll could rise.

An AFP team on the spot noted that this industrial city had been transformed for several days into a battlefield, and that it was crushed under artillery fire. “I don’t know how long we can hold out”, said Nella Kachkina, 65, a retired municipal employee.

Severodonetsk and Lyssytchansk constitute the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the Lugansk region. The Russians surround these two localities, separated by a river, and bombard them relentlessly.

In addition, Russian soldiers on Thursday killed five civilians in the Donetsk region, also in the Donbass, according to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Russia announced on Thursday that nearly 800 Ukrainian servicemen entrenched in the bowels of the Azovstal steel complex in the port of Mariupol had surrendered in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,730 since Monday.

Moscow released footage showing cohorts of men in combat gear emerging, some with crutches or bandages, after a long battle that had become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. According to kyiv, this city-martyrdom was 90% destroyed and at least 20,000 people perished there.

These soldiers, including 80 wounded, “made themselves prisoners”, underlined the Russian Ministry of Defense. kyiv did not speak of surrender. “I do everything to ensure that the most influential international forces are informed, and as far as possible involved, in the rescue of our heroes”, declared Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mainly members of a marine rifle unit and the Azov regiment, founded by Ukrainian nationalists, the evacuated fighters had been entrenched for several weeks in the maze of underground galleries dug in the Soviet era under the gigantic steelworks, massively bombarded by the Russians.

In a video released on Thursday, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov regiment, confirmed that he was still at the factory with the rest of the command, refusing to divulge details of the ongoing “operation”. Their fate remains unresolved: Ukraine wants to organize an exchange of prisoners of war but Russia has made it known that it considers at least some of them not as soldiers, but as “neo-Nazi” fighters.

Sequence with high symbolic value for Ukraine: the first trial of a Russian soldier for war crime resumed Thursday in kyiv. “I know you won’t be able to forgive me, but I beg your pardon,” Sergeant Vadim Chichimarine, 21, told the widow of the 62-year-old man he is accused of shooting dead on February 28 in the northeast of Ukraine. Life imprisonment was requested against the young soldier, who pleaded guilty.

Another war crimes trial opened Thursday in northeastern Ukraine: that of two Russian soldiers accused of firing rockets at civilian infrastructure in the Kharkiv region.

The war threatens to aggravate the global food crisis as it seriously disrupts agricultural activity and grain exports from Ukraine, a country which was until then the world’s fourth largest exporter of maize and is on the way to becoming the third largest exporter of wheat.

“Stop blocking the ports of the Black Sea! Allow the free movement of ships, trains and trucks carrying food out of Ukraine”, launched, Thursday evening, the head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, during a meeting of the UN Security Council.

To which the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, retorted by denouncing a Western desire “to blame Russia for all the problems of the world”.