- Friday March 18, 2022, following three weeks of Moscow’s offensive and an advance on several fronts, the lines have stabilized and all eyes are on Mariupol, a strategic city in Ukraine besieged by Russian forces.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday accused the Russian air force of having “knowingly” bombed a theater in the city of Marioupol where hundreds of people had taken refuge. According to Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, eight out of nine humanitarian corridors were in operation on Thursday and 3,810 civilians were evacuated from the city.
- The American President, Joe Biden, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have planned to discuss Friday. “President Biden (…) will make it clear to him that China will bear responsibility for any act aimed at supporting Russian aggression and that we will not hesitate to impose costs on it.said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
- China may have already begun to distance itself from Moscow because, according to diplomats at the UN, Russia gave up on Thursday evening to hold a vote the next day in the Security Council on a resolution related to the war in Ukraine, for lack of support from its closest allies.
- Volodymyr Zelensky implored Westerners on Thursday to help “stop this war”, when a Russian strike killed at least twenty-seven people in the east of the country. For him, “a people is being destroyed in Europe”he added, applauded by the deputies of the Bundestag, in Berlin.
- The bombardments continue in kyiv and in Kharkiv, the second largest city in the country, where at least 500 people have been killed since the start of the war. But the capital slowly came back to life on Thursday following the lifting of a curfew imposed since Tuesday evening. It has been emptied of at least half of its 3.5 million inhabitants. More than three million Ukrainians have taken the road to exile, mostly to Poland, sometimes only a stage in their exodus.
- Hit by heavy penalties, Russia has apparently escaped default for now on its debt: according to a source familiar with the matter, the JPMorgan bank has received payment of a tranche of interest of 117.2 million dollars which was due.
Read all our articles, analyzes and reports on the war in Ukraine:
Live March 17 can be found here.
Reportage. Today, Mariupol is an open hell
To analyse. Russia takes first step towards default
Your questions. The answers of the “World” to your most frequently asked questions
Story. Questioned by Volodymyr Zelensky, Joe Biden increases military support for kyiv
History of a concept. Siege warfare, a weapon to terrorize civilians
Chronic. “Countries considering falling out with the Western alliance may be inclined to hold fewer reserves”