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 Thursday, June 4, 2026, on the 1,562nd day of the conflict.
Fact of the day
New strike in “Russian” territory for kyiv which is increasing its demonstrations of force, adopting the Russian mode. Four people were killed by Ukrainian strikes in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. Three victims died in Simferopol, in “non-residential buildings”, according to Russian sources, another in a drone attack on a commuter bus. This new air offensive took place the day after an attack on energy and military sites in Saint Petersburg, where the main Russian economic forum was opening.
On Thursday, the St. Petersburg operation led the head of United States diplomacy, Marco Rubio, to warn of a “risk of escalation.”
Today’s statement
« I refer you to what I said in Versailles in June 2017 quite clearly, in the presence of President Putin, in front of a person who was at the time allegedly in charge of a media outlet, but who was a state propaganda agency. […] Things haven’t changed. I think the same thing. »
Questioned on the sidelines of his trip to Montenegro, Emmanuel Macron put his part in the machine of the controversy over Xenia Fedorova. The former director of the RT (Russia Today) France channel, banned at the start of the Russian invasion, is now a columnist, notably on CNews.
The number of the day
2. The rank occupied by Russia among the suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the European Union. “The world is on the threshold of a very serious energy crisis because of the instability in the Middle East,” noted Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s emissary on economic issues, on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. For him, Russian oil and gas are “indispensable for the survival of Europe”.
The trend
The European Union opened the way on Wednesday evening for the formal resumption of Ukraine’s accession negotiations, blocked until now by a Hungarian veto. The representatives of the 27 in Brussels gave a preliminary green light to the opening of a first group of negotiating subjects with Ukraine and Moldova, thus marking “an important step on their path to European integration,” said a presidency official. Cypriot member of the Council of the EU.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
According to several European diplomats, Hungary, now led by the pro-European Peter Magyar, indicated on Wednesday that it was lifting its veto, paving the way for this formal resumption of negotiations.
This could take place next week during a ministerial meeting of the 27 in Luxembourg, according to a diplomatic source.
