The country has become a “crime scene”, Zelensky again calls for help

Did you miss the latest events related to the war in Ukraine? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening, at 7:30 p.m. Who did what? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below:

news of the day

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) went to Boutcha on Wednesday. Ukraine is a “crime scene”, judged the British Karim Khan in this city near kyiv, where hundreds of civilian bodies were found at the end of March after the departure of Russian troops, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

“We have good reason to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court are being committed,” Karim Khan told reporters, adding that an ICC forensic team was preparing to work in Ukraine “so that we can truly separate truth from fiction.”

The phrase

“Yes, I called it a genocide”

This is Joe Biden’s response to journalists in order to qualify the situation in Ukraine invaded by Moscow. “It’s increasingly clear that Putin is simply trying to erase the very idea of ​​being a Ukrainian,” added the US president, saying the “evidence was mounting”. Comments deemed “unacceptable” by the Kremlin.

The number

100. “The bar of 100 damaged or totally destroyed sites in Ukraine will be crossed on Thursday or Friday,” warned Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center. Among these sites: historical monuments dating from the 11th and 12th centuries, churches, cathedrals, with unique liturgical objects, theatres, such as that of Mariupol, and other archive buildings. He recalls that the “deliberate destruction of sites marked with the blue emblem” of the convention can be considered a war crime.

The trend of the day

Russian forces continued their offensive on Wednesday to bring down Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine. “1,026 Ukrainian soldiers from the 36th Marine Infantry Brigade have voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered,” Moscow announced. While some military experts deem its fall inevitable, Ukrainian forces cling on and continue to resist the Russians after more than six weeks of fighting, which is now concentrated in the city’s gigantic industrial zone, where Ukrainian fighters are hiding in the underground.

While taking Mariupol would be an important victory for the Russians, as it would allow them to connect the Donbass region with Crimea, the Ukrainian president once again called on Europe for help. Volodymyr Zelensky thus called on Westerners to act more quickly against Russia, believing that “we can either stop Russia or lose all of Eastern Europe”. “If Europe loses time, Russia will use it to expand the war zone to other countries,” he added in a speech to the Estonian parliament.