Macron Sees No Early End To War As Russia Presses Attacks Near Pokrovsk

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service January 20, 2025

French President Emmanuel Macron on January 20 cautioned that the Kremlin's war against Ukraine will not end "tomorrow or the day after" following the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has vowed to quickly bring the conflict to conclusion.

The remarks came as Ukraine's military reported further Russian attacks near the strategic city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region and as Kyiv posted another video purporting to show a wounded North Korean soldier.

"Let us not delude ourselves," Macron said in an address to the French military in northwestern France. "This conflict will not be resolved tomorrow or the day after."

During his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, although he has backed off that claim in recent remarks, saying only that he will bring peace in the near term.

Trump has also criticized the amount of military aid provided to Kyiv by the administration of President Joe Biden, who left office at midday on January 20.

Macron said Western partners must give Ukraine "the means to last and to enter any future negotiations from a position of strength."

Macron said that regardless of the outcome of the war, Russia will pose a security challenge for Europe and the wider world for the foreseeable future, and he urged Europe to bolster its defenses amid uncertainty coming out of the United States.

On January 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his embattled nation had been struck by more than 1,000 Russian projectiles over the past week, prompting him to renew his urgent plea for additional air defense weapons, particularly the U.S.-made Patriot missile system.

"More Patriots for Ukraine means more protection of life. More range for Ukraine means more guarantees that the Russian war can be stopped," he added.

Zelenskiy has stepped up his appeals for the sophisticated Patriot air defense system over the past year as Russian forces continue assaults against Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian sites.

Ukraine is thought to have at least five of the $1 billion Patriot systems, although details have been kept mostly secret.

Zelenskiy is expected to speak at 2:30 p.m. at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 21 as he presses his calls for additional economic and military aid.

Zelenskiy on January 20 released another video purporting to show a wounded North Korean soldier.

The video showed a young man lying in bed saying that North Korean troops had suffered serious losses fighting alongside Kremlin forces in Russia's Kursk region.

Moscow and Pyongyang have not commented on the deployment of North Korean troops in the Kursk region. Kyiv and Western leaders say some 11,000 troops have been sent there and have suffered substantial casualties.

On the battlefield, Russian authorities reported Ukrainian drone attacks in Kazan, the capital of the Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, early on January 20.

According to local officials, drones targeted a defense industrial facility.

They claimed there were no casualties or significant damage to the facility, which could not be independently verified.

The Kazan Aviation Plant, which manufactures strategic bombers used in Russia's war against Ukraine, was reportedly the main target, which if hit, could cause a major disruption to Russia's military operations in Ukraine.

Russia's Voronezh regional government said a falling Ukrainian drone sparked a fire at an oil depot in the Liski district, where a similar incident caused a blaze on January 16, as Kyiv maintained its campaign of attacks against Russian oil-storage sites.

And early on January 21, authorities in Russia's Smolensk region reported an ongoing attack of Ukrainian drones.

The Ukrainian military said in its evening update on January 20 that "the enemy is intensively attacking Ukrainian defenders in the Pokrovsk direction."

It said 65 of the attacks had been repulsed while seven more clashes were still under way.

Pokrovsk has been the target of a long, brutal offensive by Russian forces as they attempt to capture the vital logistics hub in Ukraine's Donetsk region.

Separately, the DeepState open-source intelligence resource said Russian forces appear to have broken through another defensive line in the Donbas region that had been otherwise stable in recent months.

A sustained breakthrough there could pose a threat to Lyman, a strategic city with a prewar population of around 20,000. With its closeness to the front line, the area has been regularly bombarded by Russian forces and been left mostly in ruins.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/macron-france-ukraine- russia-trump-war/33282661.html

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Macron Sees No Early End To War As Russia Presses Attacks Near Pokrovsk