War in Ukraine: Russian strikes in Dnipro, American aid, culture and tourism… an update on the situation

Le Dniepr le 15 janvier 2024. (illustration) MAXPPP – Evgen Kotenko/Avalon

Tous les jours, Midi Libre fait le point sur la situation en Ukraine. Ce mardi 13 février 2024, découvrez les dernières actualités autour de ce conflit.

Russian strikes on Dnipro, power station hit

A power plant was damaged, a hospital was evacuated and schools closed on Tuesday in Dnipro, in central Ukraine, targeted by Russian airstrikes, reports the authorities.

The city, which has just under a million inhabitants, was the target of a missile and four groups of drones coming from the south, east and north, the Ukrainian Air Force said on its Telegram account. According to her, 16 drones out of 23 were shot down. A thermal power plant suffered significant damage, declared the DTEK company, Ukraine's leading private electricity supplier, without reporting any casualties.

Dnipro Mayor Boris Filatov said schools in one neighborhood had been closed and at least one hospital was being evacuated in forecast of a cold wave which should weigh on the electricity network.

Senate passes Ukraine aid bill

The American Senate, where the Democrats have a narrow majority, adopted this Tuesday an aid program of 95.34 billion dollars (88.43 billion euros) in favor of Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but this bill risks being rejected in the House of Representatives, with a Republican majority. Democratic President Joe Biden has been urging Congress for months to speed up the granting of this aid. Both chambers must approve the bill before the president can sign it.

The program provides $61 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel in its war against Hamas and $4.83 billion to support partners in the Indian region. peaceful, including Taiwan, and deter aggression from China. The budget also provides $9.15 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine and other conflict zones around the world.

But last week, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer removed border security provisions from the bill. The Republicans demand that the project provide for border restrictions, otherwise elected officials would not adopt it. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, criticized the text, saying it lacked conservative provisions aimed at stemming the record flow of migrants at the border between the United States and Mexico.

He had suggested in the past that the House could divide the legislation into several separate bills. "The bill before us today (…) will never be adopted by the House of Representatives and will never become law", said Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott during an early morning speech.

A bipartisan border deal, negotiated over months, clashed with most Senate Republicans after being rejected by Donald Trump, the party's leading House nominee -White.

Donald Trump hopes to use the border issue to unseat Joe Biden in the November election. Criticizing the foreign aid bill, the former president said on social media that aid to US allies should instead take priority. form of loans.

9 billion dollars to revive culture and tourism in Ukraine

Ukraine needs nine billion dollars over ten years to revive its cultural and tourism sector, Unesco said on Tuesday, which estimates the cost of the two years of war to be $19 billion. the country's tourism sector.

Russia launched on February 24, 2022 what it presented as a "special military operation" in Ukraine, denounced by kyiv and its Western allies as an invasion. This is the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. In an assessment published as the second anniversary of the start of the war approached, the United Nations Program for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) estimated that some 3.5 billion dollars the cost of damage caused by the fighting to Ukrainian cultural property.

UNESCO said it had analyzed the damage caused to 340 cultural sites, including museums, monuments, libraries and religious sites. Others are currently being evaluated.

"We estimate the need for extraordinary financing at nearly nine billion dollars over the next ten years", a declared Krista Pikkat, director of UNESCO’s Culture and Emergency Situations entity. "The damage continues to increase, and the needs for the recovery of the sector continue to grow", she added to the press.