War in Ukraine: Russia reiterates its threat and gives itself the means to attract new soldiers

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 Tuesday, May 26, 2026, on the 1,553rd day of the conflict.

Fact of the day

Will the Russian army relaunch an offensive? In any case, European leaders summoned Russian representatives to their zone on Tuesday after Moscow’s call for foreign diplomats to leave kyiv before new Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital, already massively bombed last weekend.

For several days, Russia has been threatening an escalation in its attacks on Ukraine to take revenge for a Ukrainian strike that killed, according to Moscow, 21 people in a high school in occupied territory.

Denouncing an “unacceptable escalation”, the EU announced that the Russian charge d’affaires in Brussels had been summoned as a sign of protest and assured that the EU delegation would remain present in kyiv. Several European countries have also acted in this way. At the UN, around fifty states denounced Russia’s “threats”.

Rarely, Moscow’s warning was repeated individually by the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov to his American counterpart Marco Rubio. The United States reiterated that it remained ready to act as mediator and “to do everything in its power to facilitate the end of this war.”

Today’s statement

« These are not isolated incidents, this is a deliberate strategy by Russia which seeks to destabilize our democratic societies. But just like on the battlefields in Ukraine, Russia is failing. »

The lyrics are by Ursula von der Leyen. Visiting Vilnius this Tuesday, the President of the European Commission placed the responsibility for recent drone alerts in the Baltic States on Russia, accusing it of seeking to “destabilize democratic societies” in the EU.

“The people of the Baltics are experiencing what many thought belonged to another time. Air alerts, families taking refuge in shelters, schools closed, transport suspended. This is the reality on Europe’s eastern border in 2026,” said Ursula von der Leyen.

The Baltic States, former Soviet republics sharing a long border with Russia, have for several weeks recorded an increasing number of intrusions and drone crashes on their territories.

The number of the day

10 millions rubles, or around 120,000 euros. This is the copious amount of debt that new Russian recruits hired to participate in the offensive in Ukraine will be able to see erased, according to a law signed this Monday, a new example of the Kremlin’s incentives to recruit soldiers.

For more than four years, Russia has offered attractive salaries and benefits to people who engage in its large-scale offensive against Ukraine, launched in February 2022.

This law also provides for possible cancellation of the debts of the spouse of the person signing the contract. According to this text, the new contract must be signed for a minimum period of one year and involves participation in “the special military operation”, the term used by the Kremlin to designate its offensive in Ukraine.

The trend

Candidate for the French presidential election in 2027, Edouard Philippe was visiting kyiv this Tuesday, where he met President Volodymyr Zelensky. The former Prime Minister of Emmanuel Macron indicated that he had expressed his “determination to stay alongside Ukraine until the conditions for peace are met, and even beyond”.

“I am in favor of European troops being deployed to Ukraine once peace returns, to ensure that Russia is not tempted to resume its attacks,” he said, affirming that he would “commit to working so that Ukraine can enter NATO.”