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 Saturday, May 23, 2026, on the 1,550th day of the conflict.
Fact of the day
A fire broke out in an oil depot in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea in southern Russia, following a Ukrainian drone attack, the city’s mayor announced on Saturday. “Falling debris from drones caused a fire at the oil depot. Several technical and administrative buildings caught fire. Fragments of drones also fell on the site of the oil terminal,” Mayor Andrei Kravchenko wrote on Telegram.
The attack left two people injured, he added, specifying that emergency services and specialized services were at work on site.
Located at the end of several pipelines from the oil fields of southern Russia and the Caspian Sea, the Novorossiysk oil terminal is one of the main hydrocarbon export points in Russia.
Today’s statement
« Without Ukraine, there cannot be a fully completed European project, and Ukraine’s presence in the EU must also be fully achieved – with full membership rights. »
Message from Volodymyr Zelensky on social networks this Saturday, while earlier in the week, faced with the slowness of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had suggested a status of “associate member” without voting rights for Ukraine.
The number of the day
18. The minimum number of people died after a Ukrainian drone strike on a dormitory and a vocational high school in Starobilsk (Starobelsk in Russian) in a region of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia, according to a new report put forward on Saturday by the Russian authorities. Three people are also still missing after this strike which occurred during the night from Thursday to Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called the strike a “terrorist act”, saying it “was not accidental” and promising a military response.
Today’s trend
War is now a possibility, by the Prime Minister’s own admission. Russia’s neighbor in the far north, Norway is switching to “total defense” mode, preparing its population for the worst in light of the conflict in Ukraine.
“Today, we have around 18,600 shelters, enough to cover a little less than 50% of the population” of the country (5.6 million inhabitants), explains Øistein Knudsen, head of the Norwegian Civil Defense. “Many need to be modernized: they were built during the Cold War, they are damp, old….”
Member of NATO, the Scandinavian kingdom wants to reestablish the obligation to provide new large buildings with air-raid shelters, a requirement which was lifted in 1998, a “peace dividend” generated by the implosion of the USSR.
All our file on the war in Ukraine
The idea is not to build expensive shelters, but to offer basic protection against threats like drones, now omnipresent on battlefields. The construction of shelters is one of 100 proposals made last year in a White Paper.
The government also wants to increase the number of Civil Defense personnel by 50% to 12,000 men and women, require all municipalities to have a “local preparation council” or even increase the food self-sufficiency rate to 50% by 2030.
Households are also invited to stockpile enough to last for seven days.
