War in Ukraine: six dead in Russian shooting in Kharkiv, neo-Nazis trained by the French army… update on the situation

Le point sur la situation. MAXPPP – SERGEY KOZLOV

Tous les jours, Midi Libre fait le point sur la situation en Ukraine. Ce jeudi 23 mai 2024, découvrez les dernières actualités autour de ce conflit.

Des frappes russes sur Kharkiv font six morts

Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, killed six people and injured 11 on Thursday morning, local authorities said.
These missile attacks damaged municipal and transport infrastructure and destroyed a printing house, said the mayor of Kharkiv and the regional governor.

Smoke was billowing from one of the printing house's buildings as rescue workers carried bodies out of body bags, a Reuters journalist at the scene reported .

"It’is a purely civilian site, it’is a printing company that prints books&quot ;, regional police chief Volodimir Tymochenko told reporters.
He said that two missiles had hit the printing house itself and that another had fallen nearby.

Oleksandr Filtchakov, Kharkiv regional prosecutor, said that around fifty people were in the printing house at the time of the bombing.

The city's mayor said on national television that 15 Russian missiles were fired in the attack. Seven people were also injured in the city's surroundings, Governor Oleh Synehoubov said.

Neo-Nazis trained by the French army

As revealed by Médiapart on May 22, 2024, the French army trained authentic neo-Nazi soldiers from Ukraine for combat, at the end of 2023 .

The training sessions lasting a few weeks took place at the La Courtine camp, in the south of Creuse in the fall of 2023. The aim being to teach Ukrainian soldiers "the Western method for shaking things up on the front", underlines Lieutenant-Colonel Even, head of the operational partnership detachment with Ukraine .

At this location, several men, belonging to the third assault brigade of the Azov regiment "radical nationalist movement with neo-Nazi components", are equipped like French soldiers.

But make no mistake. Some carry their neo-Nazi beliefs in their minds and on their bodies. Like the letters "ss" and the rune of Sieg, tattooed on the face of one of them.

Others appear on Instagram with more discreet tattoos but of the same ilk. In a photo "l’one multiplies Hitler salutes" and post selfies "with a neck warmer adorned with a Celtic cross".

Another poses with the emblems of the SS divisions "Totenkopf" ("skull") and "Galicia". Then on April 20 (Adolf Hitler's birthday) a soldier appeared in front of a fresco in honor of the Führer.

The fact of training these men in France and by the French army raises questions. Just like the presence of French neo-Nazis assumed in the group. One of them, known on the networks as "Cafard Misanthrope" went to fight in Ukraine and then returned to follow this training .

New arrests for alleged corruption at the Ministry of Defense

Russian authorities announced this Thursday the arrest of two officials from the army and the Ministry of Defense, as part of a corruption scandal which is growing. ;rsquo;scale and which led to the detention of five high-ranking representatives.

These are the Deputy Secretary General of the Army, General Vadim Chamarine, and a senior official in charge of procurement at the Ministry of Defense, Vladimir Verteletsky, have indicated the investigators.

Vadim Chamarine is accused of having received illicit payments between 2016 and 2023 from a factory located in the Urals which produces communications equipment, as gratification for placing larger public orders, said the national investigative committee. The general would have thus pocketed 400,000 dollars. According to the TASS news agency, Vadim Chamarine, placed in pre-trial detention for two months, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He faces a sentence of 15 years in prison.

Vladimir Verteletsky, for his part, was charged with abuse of authority in the execution of orders from the Ministry of Defense. Investigators said in a statement that he approved incomplete work in 2022 that caused a loss of more than $760,000 for public finances.

The Russian authorities' anti-corruption operation began on April 23, with the pre-trial detention of one of the deputy ministers of the Ministry of Defense, Timur Ivanov, accused of having received bribes.
Subsequently, the chief of personnel of the Ministry of Defense, Yuri Kuznetsov, and the former commander of a battalion of the Russian army, Ivan Popov, were arrested.

This is the biggest scandal shaking the Russian army in recent years, on the sidelines of its offensive in Ukraine where it has regained the initiative on the front lines, and while economist Andrei Belousov was appointed this month as Defense Minister, replacing Sergei Shoigu.
This appointment is considered by many observers as a decision resulting in particular from the Kremlin's desire to fight against unnecessary spending and corruption.

The Kremlin, which said it could not communicate on the affairs, downplayed the arrest of Vadim Chamarine and indicated that anti-corruption operations were being carried out through various Russian public agencies.
"The fight against corruption is constant work […], it’is not a campaign", a declared to journalists the spokesperson for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov.