Have you missed the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening. Here is the gist of this Wednesday, May 20, 2026, on the 1,547th day of the conflict.
Fact of the day
The President of the Lithuanian Republic and his Prime Minister were taken to shelters, the residents of Vilnius, the capital, received an SMS alert telling them to get to safety. A brief drone alert caused panic this Wednesday in the small Baltic state. This is a first since the beginning in an EU and NATO member country. We do not yet know whether the device was Russian or Ukrainian, but incidents linked to drones are increasing in the Baltic States. kyiv is in fact targeting Russian targets in the Gulf of Finland, and in particular ports and refineries, but the drones may prove defective or be diverted by Russian air defense and crash on the territory of these allied countries.
“If drones come from Ukraine, they are not there because Ukraine wanted to send a drone to Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. They are there because of the large-scale, illegal and irresponsible attack carried out by Russia,” reacted NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Today’s statement
« As Europeans, we are […] forced to become a sort of shield against monsters like Trump, Netanyahu or the Russian. We are obliged to do so because here, we respect international law. »
On the Croisette, where he is in the running for the Palme d’Or with AutofictionSpanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar has put all the belligerents in the same basket. “An artist, from his little platform […] must speak forthrightly, he must speak openly about the worst in what is happening to us, and things happen to us every day that are far too terrible,” he added.
The number of the day
3.2 billion euros. The amount of the first aid that the European Union intends to pay to Ukraine “around mid-June”, as part of its giant loan of 90 billion euros. A memorandum of understanding was concluded with kyiv, detailing the terms of this budgetary aid, and in particular the multiple conditions to be met to benefit from it. kyiv has notably committed to increasing its budgetary revenue by 6 billion euros this year.
Today’s trend
China’s stated “neutrality” in the conflict is only window dressing. The Chinese army secretly trained several hundred Russian soldiers on its territory, some of whom were deployed in Ukraine, the German newspaper revealed. The worldbased on classified documents from European intelligence services.
According to the newspaper, several hundred Russian soldiers participated at the end of 2025, on six different military sites in China, in training programs for the People’s Liberation Army. These focused on “the use of unmanned systems, electronic countermeasures against drones as well as modern combat simulations”, continues the daily.
All our file on the war in Ukraine
The participants were of different ranks and from different generations. Some were members of Russia’s elite Rubicon drone unit. At the end of the training, dozens of them participated in combat in Ukraine at the beginning of 2026, including some in command posts, still according to The world.
