Vladimir Putin ‘open’ to ‘deal’, Brittney Griner returns home
Did you miss the latest news about the war in Ukraine? don’t panic 20 minutes reserves for you every evening at 7:30 p.m. Who did what? Who said what? Where are we? Answer below:
news of the day
Ukraine accuses Russia of holding two employees of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. On Thursday, “the Russian army broke into the building where the Social Programs Department of the plant is located and violently beat the head of the department Alexey Trubenkov and his deputy Yuri Androsov with the participation of other employees.” Energoatom press release. After “this severe beating”, the Russians “took them out and took them to an unknown direction”, accused the nuclear operator.
According to Energoatom, the plant’s nuclear safety officer, Konstantin Behner, was also “thrown into the basement” but is not being held by Russian forces. The Ukrainian nuclear operator accused the Moscow soldiers, who occupied the area since the beginning of March, of “wildly fleeing and turning into real police and prisoners” and of “intensifying repression” against the employees. This is not the first time that Kiev has accused Moscow of abusing Ukrainian personnel at the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. At the end of September, its managing director was arrested by Russian forces and released a few days later.
sentence of the day
In the end, an agreement will have to be found. »
Is the Kremlin, which is fighting on the ground, afraid of being humiliated by defeat in the war? Vladimir Putin believes that an agreement will be needed “eventually” to end the conflict in Ukraine. “I have already said several times that we are ready for these agreements, we are open, but this makes us think about who we are dealing with,” the Russian president added on the sidelines of a regional summit in Kyrgyzstan. Vladimir Putin commented on Angela Merkel’s recent statements.
“This clearly raises the issue of trust,” Vladimir Putin commented. Trust is almost zero, and after such statements, the question naturally arises: How to find agreement? And can we get along with anyone? And with what guarantees? “Maybe we should have started all this earlier (the attack in Ukraine). But we actually hoped for the possibility of reaching an agreement within the framework of the Minsk agreements,” he added.
The number of the day
8.5. This is the number of years in prison that activist Ilya Yachi received for criticizing the military attack against Ukraine. The charismatic 39-year-old rival greeted the verdict with laughter. He was found guilty of spreading “false information” about the military after he condemned the “massacre of civilians” in the Ukrainian town of Butcha, near Kyiv, which Russia has accused of abuse, which he denies.
“(Vladimir) Putin’s next shameful and illegal sentence will not silence Ilya and should not frighten honest people in Russia,” responded Alexei Navalny in a message published by his supporters on social networks. He also said he was “proud” of Ilia Iachine, who “will survive everything”.
Trend of the day
According to footage from CNN and Fox News, American basketball player Brittney Griner landed in Texas on Friday morning after being released from a Russian prison in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout. Britney Griner, 32, who was arrested in Russia in February on drug-trafficking charges, and Victor Bout, 55, who is serving a 25-year sentence in a US prison, were exchanged at the airport in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC on Friday that the basketball player, who had to be transferred to a military facility to recover, is in good spirits. “We’re going to give him access to all the health professionals he needs to make sure he’s OK,” she said.
