The journalist and co-founder of the “Stand With Ukraine” collective returns, in “11/13” of June 18, to the drone attack suffered by Moscow. A symbolic Ukrainian attack, to, above all, she says, “stop the Russian war machine” and preserve Ukrainian civilians.
This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the interview above. Click on the video to watch it in its entirety.
Flore Maréchal: You saw this plume of smoke, these images from midday of this attack on Moscow. This is a signal sent to Vladimir Putin and the Muscovites to say: “Be careful, the war is also at home, at your doors” ?
Aline Le Bail-Kremer: Yes, and it also says that Ukraine is defending itself, resisting and, to use the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is a just response to the attacks carried out by Russia against Ukrainian civilians. Particularly, of course, to the one who recently drew worldwide attention to one of the most sacred monuments of the Ukrainian Orthodox religion, namely the Pechersk Lavra in kyiv, so there was talk of an answer. But it is also the signal of the absolute objective of the Ukrainians, and there is no other more important: to slow down, to stop the Russian war machine. The targets are oil targets, it is a refinery. This is what is being attacked.
Afterwards, there is a political dimension, but strategically, from a purely military point of view, the usefulness of these strikes, because there are more and more of them, with more and more concrete and quite impressive results, is that the Russian war machine is stopped. Because what does this mean for Ukrainians? That means lives saved. With each damaged refinery, Ukrainian lives were saved. This is the objective of this entire campaign which has been in place for a long time now, but with long-range and medium-range effects. Because that’s what it says: that is, Moscow is no longer safe and we’re talking about military sites. I remind you that last night, there was this strike on Moscow, but also a bridge in Northern Crimea, which is not the Kerch bridge, but a bridge very useful to Russian military logistics, to fuel depots in other regions, to command posts. So it’s all these targets whose objective is really to slow down this war machine.
You are talking about stopping, slowing down this war machine. This is also what Volodymyr Zelensky said on the social network X, formerly Twitter. “It’s a fully justified response”he said, “to Russian attacks on our cities and communities, as well as another important result of our fighters’ work against the installations that support the Russian war machine.” He adds: “It is time for the war to end and Russia must understand that diplomatic steps are necessary.” He added, in a video message a little later in the morning: “We don’t want this war, we never wanted it. But if Ukraine burns, well, your Moscow will burn too.” This is the message sent and it is a message that says what? Who says: we’re heading towards escalation if you don’t get back to the negotiating table?
What it says is that Ukraine will not surrender, that Ukraine will not submit.
There have been retaliatory attacks for some time. It is also perhaps accelerating because it is supported a little more than before by Donald Trump with this G7 in Evian yesterday?
There is something extremely important that happened yesterday in Evian, in particular on the collective position of all the members of the G7, because among these members, there is the United States, so we still felt an inflection. But generally speaking, there is also the fact that the defense machine, with the support of its allies, notably Europe, is developing in an extremely spectacular way. And there are a lot of commentators or experts on purely military issues who recognize this, particularly on the issue of drones and their long-range strike capacity. This is what is at stake, but afterwards, if we decode well, for months, the strategy that has been put in place, there has been a strike campaign against the Russian air defense systems, and then, the defense is deployed. And so Ukraine’s objective is for Russia to stop bombing Ukrainian civilians.
Click on the video to watch the interview in full.
