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World

Ukraine Braces for Major Russian Offensive

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Russia is preparing to launch a major new offensive against Ukraine in the coming weeks, a top Ukrainian security official said, adding to mounting concerns in Kyiv and the West that the Kremlin is preparing a renewed push to seize large areas of the country.

“Russia is preparing for maximum escalation,” said

Oleksiy Danilov,

the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, in an interview with Sky News published online early Wednesday local time. “It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training.”

The warning comes after weeks in which Ukrainian and Western officials have pointed to the risk of a possible new offensive by Russia in the months ahead. Within Russia, the military is under pressure to regain battlefield momentum after it lost broad swaths of territory to a Ukrainian offensive during the second half of last year. Ukraine’s forces recaptured large areas of the country seized by Russia earlier in the year, including Kherson, the only regional capital occupied by the Kremlin’s military.

Since the Ukrainian military’s offensive, the front lines of the conflict have become largely static, with Russia making incremental gains around the small city of Bakhmut. It has become a central battlefield in the war, with Russia sending wave upon wave of newly recruited soldiers to the front line.

Russia mobilized roughly 300,000 additional soldiers starting last September in what the Russian government termed a partial mobilization of reservists. Mr. Danilov said that he expected more than half of those newly mobilized soldiers would be used in any new offensive.

Mr. Danilov also said that a new Russian assault could coincide with the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country on Feb. 24, 2022.

A Ukrainian serviceman entered a shelter near a front-line position in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine at the end of January.



Photo:

yasuyoshi chiba/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said separately on Tuesday evening that he has been discussing with senior officials plans to thwart any new attempt by Russia to reverse its battlefield losses in Ukraine.

“We are studying the situation in detail in all major operational directions and in the long term. What the occupier is preparing for, and how we are already responding to Russia’s preparations for a revanche attempt,” he said in his nightly address to the nation.

In recent weeks Ukrainian officials have coupled warnings of a new Russian offensive with calls for Western countries to supply more weapons that could help counter a renewed attack. Following a decision last week by the U.S., Germany and other countries to provide Ukraine with at least 120 main battle tanks, Ukrainian officials have called for jet fighters. President Biden said on Monday that the U.S. wouldn’t provide F-16 warplanes to Ukraine, although he didn’t put a time frame on the prohibition.

Separately, Ukraine’s top prosecutor announced a slew of corruption cases against former senior Ukrainian officials on Wednesday. In a post on Facebook,

Andriy Kostin

said his office had officially notified six former top officials at the ministry of defense and other institutions of the cases. The accusations against them range from misuse of funds to embezzling and accepting bribes.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Mr. Zelensky fired nearly a dozen senior officials in an effort to prevent and clamp down on corruption. The crackdown is seen as critical to his efforts to ensure the continued flow of Western military and financial support. Ordinary Ukrainians, who are fighting and dying by the thousands in the war, have also insisted on an end to corruption in the country.

“Corruption in war is looting!” said Mr. Kostin. “My signal to all officials at all levels, wherever they are: there will be no return to the past.”

Fighting raged in Ukraine’s east, the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday morning, with Ukrainian forces repelling Russian attacks in at least eight separate areas in the Donetsk region, including around Bakhmut, where Ukrainian troops have held out against overwhelming Russian firepower for more than six months. Ukraine’s military general staff said in an update on the fighting posted on Facebook that it inflicted heavy losses on Russian forces in the east. 

The Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday said that Russian forces had eliminated Ukrainian units and fighting vehicles in the Donetsk region.

Outside of Bakhmut, Russian forces last month captured the nearby mining town of Soledar, raising fears that Russia’s mobilization of reservists was beginning to help it reclaim the military initiative in an area that has become highly symbolic and costly for both sides, although with uncertain strategic value on the battlefield. 

Russia also continued lethal shelling of the city of Kherson, which Ukrainian forces recaptured in November, local officials said. The region’s military administration said in a morning update on Wednesday that one person had been killed and another injured as Russian forces launched 42 separate mortar and rocket attacks on the area over the past day.

Russia has made incremental gains around Bakhmut, a Ukrainian city that has become a central battlefield in the war.



Photo:

Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal

The British Defense Ministry said Wednesday morning that Kherson “remains the most consistently shelled large Ukrainian city outside of the Donbas,” though Russia’s rationale for expending ammunition there remained unclear.

“Commanders are likely partially aiming to degrade civilian morale and to deter any Ukrainian counter-attacks across the Dnipro River,” the ministry said in an intelligence update posted on Twitter.

Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson was one of the most important symbolic defeats for the Kremlin in the entire war, providing a psychological boost for Ukrainian forces and a strategic victory in Ukraine’s push to retake its critical port cities along the Black Sea. Ukrainian officials have also said they have been striking in Russian-occupied territory south of the Dnipro river, which flows past the city of Kherson, since November.

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

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US

Telling the Truth About Possible War Over Taiwan

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Soldiers rush after alighting from an assault amphibious vehicle during a military drill in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, Jan. 12.



Photo:

Daniel Ceng/Associated Press

Honesty is not the default policy in Washington these days, so the political and media classes were jolted this weekend by the leak of a private warning by a U.S. general telling his troops to prepare for a possible war with China over Taiwan in two years. Imagine: A warrior telling his troops to be ready for war.

In an internal memo leaked to NBC News, Gen. Michael Minihan told his troops: “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” The general runs the Air Mobility Command, the Air Force’s tank-refueling operation, and he says in his memo that he wants his force to be “ready to fight and win in the first island chain” off the eastern coast of continental Asia. He called for taking more calculated risks in training.

The general’s document won’t be remembered for subtlety. One of his suggestions is that airmen with weapons qualifications start doing target practice with “unrepentant lethality.” Another tells airmen to get their affairs in order. This candor seems to have alarmed higher-ups at the Pentagon, and NBC quoted an unidentified Defense official as saying the general’s “comments are not representative of the department’s view on China.”

But while Gen. Minihan’s words may be blunt, his concern is broadly shared, or ought to be. U.S. Navy Adm.

Phil Davidson

told Congress in 2021 that he worried China was “accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States,” and could strike Taiwan before 2027. Gen. Minihan came to his post after a tour as deputy of Indo-Pacific Command. He like many others suggested that 2025 may be a ripe moment for Chinese President

Xi Jinping

to move. Taiwan and the U.S. both have presidential elections in 2024 that China may see as moments of weakness.

No less than Secretary of State

Antony Blinken

said last year that Beijing was “determined to pursue reunification” with Taiwan “on a much faster timeline” than it had previously contemplated. Are war-fighters supposed to ignore that message as they prepare for their risky missions?

Gen. Minihan is doing his troops a favor by speaking directly about a war they might have to fight. A recent war game conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that, in a conflict over Taiwan, “the scale of casualties” would “stagger a U.S. military that has dominated battlefields for a generation.” Gen. Minihan’s boom operators are accustomed to working in skies the U.S. controls. Tankers would be essential in a fight for Taiwan given the vast distance over the Pacific—and would be vulnerable to heavy losses.

Former naval officer

Seth Cropsey

explained on these pages last week that America isn’t investing in the ships and weapons stockpiles that would be required to support a long war in the Western Pacific. Such yawning gaps in U.S. preparedness make a decision by Beijing to invade or blockade the democratic island more likely. Preventing a war for Taiwan requires showing Beijing that the U.S. has the means and the will to fight and repel an invasion.

Whatever his rhetorical flourishes, Gen. Minihan seems to understand this, and what Americans should really worry about is that some of his political and military superiors don’t.

Journal Editorial Report: Paul Gigot interviews General Jack Keane. Images: Zuma Press/Polish Defense Ministry via AP Composite: Mark Kelly

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Appeared in the January 30, 2023, print edition as ‘Telling the Truth About War Over Taiwan.’

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World

Russia Seeks Gains in Ukraine Before Western Tanks Turn Up

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Russian forces pressed an offensive in eastern Ukraine on Friday, seeking to seize an advantage in the months before tanks pledged by Kyiv’s Western allies begin to arrive on the battlefield.

Ukrainian forces said on Friday they had repelled Russian attacks on Vuhledar and several other villages in the eastern Donetsk region over the preceding 24 hours. Russia also launched 148 attacks along the front line with Ukrainian forces in the southern Zaporizhzhia region over the past day using tanks, rockets and artillery, the regional military administration said. 

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had undertaken more offensive maneuvers over the past 24 hours both in Zaporizhzhia and Vuhledar, where it said it had launched strikes on Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade and had downed a Ukrainian Su-25 warplane.

The European Union on Friday, meanwhile, extended its economic sanctions on Russia for the next six months. The decision affects a swath of sanctions imposed last year, from financial sanctions on Russian banks and its central bank to export and import bans. 

There had been concerns that Hungarian Prime Minister

Viktor Orban

could push to weaken the sanctions package. In recent months, he has attacked the EU’s sanctions, especially the EU oil import embargo on Moscow, saying they are more costly for Europe than for Russia. Decisions on sanctions are taken by consensus among the EU’s 27 member states. 

While Hungary stepped back from objecting to renewing the economic sanctions, it is pushing for the EU to drop sanctions on several Russian executives who have been blacklisted by the EU, according to several EU diplomats. A decision is due in March on rolling over these sanctions. 

Ukraine’s President

Volodymyr Zelensky

discussed the situation in Vuhledar and the city of Bakhmut at a meeting with military chiefs on Thursday, he said in his nightly address.

Russian servicemen in Ukraine launch rockets in an image released Friday by the Russian Defense Ministry.



Photo:

Russian Defense Ministry Press O/Zuma Press

After months of setbacks, Russian forces earlier this month broke through Ukrainian defenses in the east to seize the town of Soledar. That has made it harder for Ukraine to keep hold of neighboring Bakhmut, which has been at the epicenter of the war for several months. The city is central to Russia’s main goal: to take over the remainder of Donetsk, and the wider industrial area known as Donbas. But the fighting there has come at huge cost for both sides.

“The more Russia loses in this battle for Donbas, the less its overall potential will be,” the Ukrainian president said. “We know what the occupiers are planning. We are countering it.”

Ukrainian officials warn that Russia is gearing up for a renewed onslaught this spring after mobilizing some 300,000 men to shore up its faltering campaign last fall. For Moscow, there is a window before tanks pledged this week by Kyiv’s Western allies arrive in Ukraine, potentially tilting the battlefield again. 

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday its forces had launched a series of strikes over the past day on Ukrainian military and infrastructure targets that had disrupted the transfer of weapons, including those from countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, being delivered to the front.

Kyiv’s allies are rushing to assemble two battalions’ worth of Leopard 2 tanks from a range of European countries after Germany and the U.S. committed to provide their own tanks. The initial battalion is expected to arrive in Ukraine within three months.

A Ukrainian serviceman in Bakhmut rests next to an armored medical vehicle.



Photo:

anatolii stepanov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Poland, which has been at the forefront of pushing for increased military support for Ukraine, on Friday said it would send 60 upgraded T-72 tanks—half of them Polish-made PT-91 Twardy tanks—in addition to its contribution of 14 Leopards.

The U.S. has also pledged 31 M1 Abrams tanks, but those will take much longer to arrive in Ukraine because they are being procured through the defense industry instead of being pulled from existing American defense stocks. 

Mr. Zelensky has urged Western countries to speed up the delivery of tanks and the training of Ukrainian forces to use them as Russia regains initiative.

Russian officials have said the tanks won’t alter dynamics on the battlefield and will only lead to escalation in the war.

Stefano Sannino,

secretary-general of the European Union’s European External Action Service, said during a visit to Japan that German and U.S. tank provisions weren’t escalatory and were meant to help Ukrainians defend themselves, rather than making them attackers. The decision to supply them is in response to Russian escalation, Mr. Sannino said, accusing Moscow of carrying out indiscriminate attacks on civilians and cities. 

Shelling has caused damage in central Bakhmut as Ukrainian and Russian forces fight over the city.



Photo:

Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal

The tanks will enable Ukraine to destroy enemy tanks, offer greater protection and support combined operations, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense said.

Assessing recent Russian claims of advances, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces had likely conducted local, probing attacks near Vuhledar in the east and Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region but that Russia hadn’t achieved substantial gains. 

Russian military sources are deliberately spreading misinformation in an effort to imply that the Russian operation is sustaining momentum, the ministry said.

Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com

As the U.S. and its allies start sending Abrams, Leopards and other tanks to help Ukraine, those vehicles are set to change the dynamics of the war along the front lines. WSJ examines how the tanks that Ukraine will receive from the West compare with Russia’s vehicles. Illustration: Adam Adada

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World

U.S. Poised to Provide Abrams Tanks to Ukraine

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WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is poised to send a significant number of Abrams M1 tanks to Ukraine, settling a rift that threatened the unity of the alliance supporting Ukraine at a pivotal moment in the war, U.S. officials said.

The move, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday, would be part of a broader diplomatic understanding with Germany in which Berlin would agree to send a smaller number of its own Leopard 2 tanks and would approve the delivery of more of the German-made tanks by Poland and other nations.

The shift in the U.S. position follows a Jan. 17 call between President Biden and German Chancellor

Olaf Scholz

in which Mr. Biden agreed to look into providing the Abrams tanks against the judgment of the Pentagon, which thought the tanks would be too difficult for Ukraine to field and maintain.

A German-built Leopard tank was used in a military exercise in May in Nowogard, Poland.



Photo:

wojtek radwanski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A senior German official said that the issue had been the subject of intense negotiation between Washington and Berlin for more than a week, which included discussions between National Security Jake Sullivan and his German counterpart.

The White House declined to comment on the deliberations or say when the first Abrams might be delivered. But some U.S. officials said it might take 12 months.

Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told German television last week that German and U.S. tanks don’t need to be provided at the same time, leaving an opening for the U.S. to provide the Abrams at a later point.

A senior German politician said Tuesday that Germany’s government would pledge to provide around 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv from its stocks and approve third-party requests from other European countries to donate German-made tanks to Ukraine as soon as the agreement with the U.S. is announced.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe have sent Kyiv tens of billions of dollars in military aid, including heavy artillery, missile launchers, millions of munitions, air defenses and infantry fighting vehicles, but the infusion of new armor would come at a critical moment in the war.

Ukrainian officials have been planning a counteroffensive in the coming months to regain territory, including to the south where Russia has established a land bridge from Rostov to the Crimean Peninsula. Russia, which has been mobilizing hundreds of thousands of additional troops, is planning its own operations.

In a contentious meeting last week at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the U.S. and its allies failed to persuade Germany to provide the tanks and allow other nations to send their German-made tanks. That exposed the first serious division in the alliance that has supported Kyiv, a coalition of nations assembled since Russia invaded Ukraine last February and that has been more or less defined by consensus.

German officials had initially said that they wouldn’t be the first to send tanks to Ukraine and wouldn’t do so unless the U.S. provided its own Abrams tanks. That put pressure on Germany but also the U.S. to contribute its tanks.

Poland’s defense minister said Tuesday that Poland had asked Germany for permission to send some of its German-made tanks to Ukraine. “The Germans have already received our request for consent to transfer Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine,” Defense Minister

Mariusz Błaszczak

said. “I also appeal to the German side to join the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks.”

Publicly, U.S. officials have praised Germany for weapons contributions it has made to Ukraine, including the IRIS-T air defense system and the promise to send a Patriot antimissile battery to supplement the ones pledged by the U.S. and the Netherlands, as well as Marder infantry-fighting vehicles.

Privately, U.S. officials were frustrated by Germany’s refusal to approve the provision of German-made tanks and have debated how to persuade Berlin to change its stance.

Pentagon officials want Leopard tanks for Ukraine, but didn’t want to send the Abrams there now, arguing that the gas-guzzling tanks with their gas turbine engines, fuel requirements and substantial amount of training and logistics makes them less-than-desirable for this moment in the nearly yearlong conflict.

Some State Department and White House officials, however, had been open to meeting the German demands on the Abrams to avoid a diplomatic rupture among Ukraine’s backers and to expedite the delivery of more armor. Some Democratic lawmakers close to the White House, such as Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, have also urged that some Abrams be provided.

The British promised earlier this month to send 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, but that wasn’t enough to persuade the Germans to release their hold on the Leopards.

A Ukrainian fighter fired a grenade launcher in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region on Monday.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Mr. Pistorius, who was sworn into office as German defense minister last week, has said several times that the ultimate decision about sending German tanks to Ukraine lay with Mr. Scholz.

Under German law, the Economy Ministry is responsible for such requests, which need to be coordinated with the Defense Ministry and ultimately be approved by the Chancellery.

Economy Minister

Robert Habeck,

whose Green Party rules in a coalition with Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, has come out in favor of sending German-made tanks to Ukraine, as has the Green foreign minister. Mr. Habeck would make sure the request is expedited, said officials familiar with his thinking.

U.S. and other NATO officials have suggested that the Leopard tank is most appropriate for Ukraine because of its availability in several countries and the possibility of quickly building supply and maintenance chains.

But German officials said that Mr. Scholz was concerned about ending up with a fleet of almost exclusively German-made tanks being used to fight the Russians in Ukraine, a scenario that could single his country out as a party to the conflict.

“We absolutely want to have German tanks in Ukraine but they need to be part of a broad coalition that would provide a mix of hardware, including the Abrams,” one official said.

The Engels air base, a key aviation hub, was one of the targets of strikes inside Russian territory. WSJ explains what images and videos of the incidents can tell us about Kyiv’s tactics to destabilize Moscow far from the front lines. Photo composite: Eve Hartley via Planet Labs/Maxar

Ukrainian officials said Western tanks were needed urgently and voiced hope that it would be a matter of time before the country receives them.

“The question of time is a question of life for us,”

Oleksiy Danilov,

the secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

In Moscow, chief of staff Gen.

Valery Gerasimov,

who led the initial invasion and was recently named commander of the Kremlin’s troops in Ukraine, said Russia was facing the entire “collective West” in the war and hadn’t faced such intensive fighting in its modern history.

In his first interview since the invasion, Gen. Gerasimov told government newspaper Argumenty i Fakty that Russia was forced to mobilize 300,000 reservists last year because of the West’s support for Ukraine. He said the draft, which exposed many of the problems of the Russian military including inadequate training and equipment, had faced snags but that the army had since addressed them.

Though President

Vladimir Putin

has said he doesn’t see a need for another mobilization, Russians are girding for a new round. After Russia suffered a string of losses in the early fall, the draft stabilized the front lines and has since appeared to tilt the calculus of attrition in Moscow’s favor, as Russia claimed a series of gains in Ukraine’s east and south this month.

—Evan Gershkovich contributed to this article.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com and Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com

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World

The War in Ukraine Will Be Long. Is the West Ready?

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The war in Ukraine, it’s clear by now, won’t end soon. The bet in Moscow—and the fear in Kyiv—is that the West will lose stamina before Russia suffers a decisive defeat.

So far, Russia’s expectations of discord among Ukraine’s backers haven’t materialized. Europe has severed its dependence on Russian energy with limited pain and no political cataclysms. As all major Western economies grew in 2022 despite the disruptions, the consensus behind supplying weapons to Kyiv has only solidified.

Yet, with Russia announcing a mobilization of hundreds of thousands of soldiers in October and switching its economy to a war footing, time could be on Moscow’s side. So far, neither the U.S. nor Europe has made the adjustments, especially in military production, that are necessary for sustaining Ukraine in a war that could potentially drag on for several years. Neither are they immune to pain from further energy shocks.

“The idea that a major classic conventional war in Europe could last as long as one of the two world wars is not something we are yet ready for,” says

Bruno Tertrais,

deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris think tank. “Even though the resilience of European societies has been remarkable, it cannot be taken for granted.”

Ukrainian troops target Russian positions with a mortar along the front line near Bakhmut.



Photo:

Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

A new Congress

The same goes for the U.S. While the lame-duck Congress in December authorized $44.9 billion in funding to support the war in Ukraine, probably enough for the next nine months, new Republican control of the House means that further military and civilian aid packages for Kyiv may be more complicated to fund.

If time works to Moscow’s advantage, it’s in the West’s interest to dramatically increase support for Ukraine in coming months, abandoning the excessive caution that characterized weapons deliveries until now, says retired Air Marshal

Edward Stringer,

former head of operations at the British Defense Staff.

“By continuing to drip-feed just enough for Ukraine not to lose, what the West is doing is just prolonging the war,” Air Marshal Stringer says. “Whether we realize it or not, Russia has thrown a gauntlet to the West. And, even though our own troops aren’t fighting there, we are thoroughly invested in this conflict, and we have to provide the materiel to win it.”

Ukraine’s own once-significant defense industry has been decimated by Russian airstrikes in the 11 months of war, and the country now is almost wholly reliant on Western-provided weapons and ammunition to survive. While Russia’s economy, roughly the size of Spain’s, is a minnow compared with the combined might of the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, Western defense procurement and manufacturing—unlike Russia’s—is largely continuing to follow peacetime procedures and schedules.

“The West, in general, naturally overshadows Russia in economic potential and defense-industrial capacity, and that should make you believe that, in a protracted war, Ukraine with Western support stands a much better chance of winning the conflict,” says

Michael Kofman,

director of Russia studies at the Center for Naval Analyses, a think tank that advises the U.S. military. “But that is not a predetermined outcome. Potential is just that. It takes a great deal of will, and wars are fundamentally a contest of wills.”

Russia’s mobilization of 300,000 troops last fall alleviated a manpower problem. Here, conscripts prepare to board a train in Omsk, Russia, in November.



Photo:

ALEXEY MALGAVKO/REUTERS

Manpower math

Before the October mobilization, Russia—which began the invasion using mostly full-time contract troops—suffered from manpower shortages in Ukraine while relying on an overwhelming advantage in artillery firepower. Now that Russia has mobilized 300,000 reservists, it has solved its manpower problem just as it’s starting to run low on ammunition and materiel.

Long term, the arithmetic of manpower works to Moscow’s advantage as Russia has 3.5 times Ukraine’s population. Even if Russia loses two soldiers for every one Ukrainian service member killed, it still improves its relative strength. So far, Western officials say, Russia’s battlefield fatalities—numbering in several tens of thousands—are comparable to Ukraine’s.

The calculus on ammunition and weaponry is more complicated. Ukraine uses up Western-supplied 155 mm artillery shells at roughly twice the rate that they are being manufactured by the U.S. and allies, military analysts say. At this rate of fire, Kyiv could draw down U.S. and European reserves to critical levels at some point this summer or fall.

By then, Russia—with its single-minded focus on the war—may be able to expand its own ammunition production to keep pace with the tempo of the fighting. The U.S. and allies are also investing in new ammunition production lines, but these are unlikely to make a major difference until next year, creating a potentially dangerous gap between Ukraine’s and Russia’s firepower in the second half of 2023.

“We should not underestimate Russia. They are mobilizing more troops, they are working hard to acquire more equipment, more ammunition, and they have shown willingness to actually suffer but to continue the war,” NATO Secretary-General

Jens Stoltenberg

says. “There is no indication that President Putin has changed the overall aim of his brutal war against Ukraine. So we need to be prepared for the long haul.”

Ukrainian soldiers watch as smoke billows during fighting in Soledar, a small town near Bakhmut.



Photo:

Libkos/Associated Press

An existential fight

The mobilization has already allowed Mr. Putin to stabilize the front line, and to launch a counteroffensive around the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. Possibilities of a negotiated settlement are remote in the foreseeable future.

“Any notion of the peace process is out because Putin is doing everything to make clear that this is existential for him,” says

Ivo Daalder,

a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who heads the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “He is preparing his population for a long war, and I don’t think he’s ever going to give up on his imperial ambitions for controlling Ukraine.” With no end to the conflict in sight, he says, the U.S. and allies should already start preparing to integrate the government-controlled majority of Ukraine into Western institutions, without waiting for the war’s conclusion.

Ukraine says that its war aim is to oust Russia from all territories conquered in the past year and the areas it lost to Russia in 2014, including Crimea. Ukraine regaining even part of these areas would endanger Mr. Putin’s hold on power at home.

Russia seeks, at a minimum, to conquer the Ukrainian-held parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that Mr. Putin declared to be part of Russia in October. Currently, almost the entire front line runs across what Russia considers to be its own sovereign soil.

Ukrainian officials warn that Moscow’s initial war goal, the occupation of Kyiv and the entirety of the country, hasn’t changed—and that any pause in the conflict would be used by Mr. Putin to regroup and strike again.

“They are preparing for new battles, for new offensive operations, not for talks. Nothing speaks in favor of Russia being ready to talk,” says Ukraine Foreign Minister

Dmytro Kuleba.

“I know Russia, I see what is happening in Russia. And I think it’s either them or us. There is nothing in between now anymore.”

Mr. Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He can be reached at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com.

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World

U.S., Allies Say Armored Vehicles Will Give Ukraine’s Troops an Edge

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The U.S., France and Germany have said they will send dozens of armored infantry vehicles to Ukraine, a significant deployment of Western support at a critical juncture in its war against invading Russian forces.

President Biden said Thursday that the U.S. would provide Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a tracked vehicle that resembles a tank but with a smaller gun, fulfilling months of requests from Kyiv. The Bradleys are part of a new military-aid package—which officials said they expected to outline formally Friday—that would include other munitions, vehicles and weaponry. 

Germany, meanwhile, said it would send Marder infantry vehicles, and France said it would send AMX-10 wheeled armored vehicles.

The vehicles will give Ukraine a new armed and armored capability, enabling its forces to roll mechanized infantry troops into the fight and giving them a higher level of maneuverability and firepower.

“It will provide a significant boost to Ukraine’s already impressive armored capabilities and we’re confident that it will aid them on the battlefield,” said Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, adding that it will be particularly effective against Russian tanks. “It’s not a tank but a tank-killer,” he said.

Gen. Ryder declined to give details on the types of Bradleys that would be provided, how long it would take to furnish them or the time that would be needed to train Ukrainians on the vehicles. 

Germany’s chancellor

Olaf Scholz

decided to send the Marder vehicles as well as one battery of the Patriot missile-defense system following a conversation Thursday with Mr. Biden, a German government spokesman said. 

Ukraine needs an array of equipment to reconstitute after heavy losses in recent months and to arm itself for coming offensives.

The West’s decision to provide the vehicles isn’t necessarily a major inflection point, but another turn of security assistance with more and better equipment, said Michael Kofman, the research director for Russian studies at

CNA,

a think tank.

“We are more than 10 months into the war now and it’s clear that the West is searching for what additional capabilities can be provided to Ukraine to help it achieve victory,” he said. “As the war drags on, this search will entail digging into the repertoire of capabilities that are available and nations changing policy over time on those weapons or systems that they were previously withholding.”

The vehicles offer a number of advantages to Ukrainian forces. As with wheeled Australian Bushmasters and Turkish Kirpi mine-resistant armored personnel vehicles that have already been sent, they can transport infantry near front lines in relative safety, giving Ukrainian troops more mobility and impunity than they otherwise would have. If the U.S. provides the vehicles in large numbers, that could give Ukraine a serious advantage. 



Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 miles per hour

230 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

Can carry up to 10 personnel

depending on model

Main gun

25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Can carry up to 10 personnel

depending on model

Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 mph

230 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Main gun

25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun

Can carry up to 10 personnel

depending on model

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 mph

230 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

Main gun

25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun

Can carry up to 10 personnel

depending on model

Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 mph

230 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Main gun

25mm M242

Bushmaster chain gun

Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 mph

230 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Main gun

25mm M242

Bushmaster chain gun

Can carry up to 10 personnel depending on model

Wheeled vehicles such as the AMX-10 can move faster than tracked vehicles, giving Ukrainian forces vital speed against slow-moving Russian forces. Even tracked Bradleys, which have an official top speed of around 35 mph, can move quickly, with soldiers reporting having driven them above 50 mph.

Wheeled vehicles generally must stay on roads or firm ground, unlike tracked vehicles, which can drive through mud, sand and other unstable types of terrain. But wheeled vehicles normally get better gas mileage, giving them greater autonomy in operations. They also ordinarily require less maintenance than tracked vehicles.

While AMX-10s and Bradleys don’t have cannons as tanks do, they carry guns that can be lethal. The AMX-10 is referred to as a “tank killer” because it fires shells almost as large as those of a tank that can pierce tank armor. Bradleys carry TOW missiles that can destroy most tanks.

Both vehicles have better passive and active protection, targeting equipment, and secondary guns than almost any Russian tank or comparable vehicle.

France has committed to giving Ukraine fast AMX-10s.



Photo:

emmanuel dunand/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Poland gave Ukraine more than 240 modernized Soviet-type tanks early in the war. Now, Poland is considering a request from Ukraine to donate its German-made Leopard main battle tanks, a senior Polish diplomat said. 

“They are for real considering giving anything just to help Ukraine,” said a Czech official closely involved in helping ship western arms into Ukraine, who confirmed that request.

The Leopards are much more heavily armored, and more protected against antitank weapons, than the vehicles France, Germany, and the U.S. have so far offered. 

Poland has more than 240 Leopard tanks, enough for two tank brigades, and plans to eventually unload all of them, said Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw think tank close to the Polish government. The pace at which it could give those to Ukraine depends on how quickly Poland receives replacement tanks it has ordered from manufacturers in South Korea and the U.S., he said. Berlin would also need to approve.

“It’s a question of not if, but when,” said Mr. Debski, adding that the Western reluctance to provide tanks was finally diminishing after months of diplomatic pressure. “It’s exactly something Poland has argued for, for many months.”

—Bojan Pancevski and Drew Hinshaw contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

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World

Putin Describes Situation in Occupied Ukrainian Territories as ‘Extremely Difficult’

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Mr. Putin made a rare admission Tuesday that the war in Ukraine—where Russian forces have suffered a number of stinging setbacks since the summer—is facing obstacles.

Mr. Putin said that there were difficulties in the Ukrainian territories that the Kremlin has illegally claimed as Russian land.

In September, the Kremlin staged referendums in Russian-controlled Luhansk and areas of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. It then declared that Moscow had annexed those regions, despite Russian forces only controlling some portions of them.

In video comments published Tuesday, marking Security Workers Day—a special holiday for employees in that sector—Mr. Putin described the situation in those territories as “extremely difficult.”

Moscow has previously sought to play down any problems with Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, with the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, casting battlefield retreats as a necessary step to regroup and prevent the unnecessary loss of Russian service personnel.

In September, Mr. Putin ordered what he called a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 draftees, arguing that the move—unpopular among most Russians, polls show—was needed to defend Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Kremlin leader acknowledging difficulties in the recently seized territories could be a strategy to prepare the Russian population for a protracted war or laying the groundwork for the call up of additional troops, some analysts who monitor Kremlin policy have said.

Although the country’s defense ministry announced in October that the mobilization was complete, the fact that Mr. Putin hasn’t signed a decree officially ending the draft has stirred concern among many Russians who fear another draft is imminent. But others view a new call-up as inevitable.

Mobilized soldiers received combat training this month outside Moscow.



Photo:

yuri kochetkov/Shutterstock

“Mobilization cannot be partial. If it is declared, then it goes until the end of the war in waves,” Igor Skurlatov, a political analyst who heads Third Power, a social group that unites Russian ultra-patriots, wrote on his Telegram channel Saturday. “These are military basics. Why anyone thinks otherwise is unclear.”

In November, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that there were no discussions in the Kremlin of a new mobilization, but “I can’t speak for the defense ministry,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Putin told the security services that people living in the Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine are citizens of Russia and it was their “duty to do everything necessary to ensure their security, rights and freedoms as much as possible.”

Security services personnel include employees of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Protective Service includes presidential security, the Main Directorate of Special Programs, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

Mr. Putin called on the FSB to enhance the monitoring of Russian society, including putting places of mass gatherings, strategic facilities, transport and energy infrastructure “under constant control.”

A “concentration of forces is now required from counterintelligence agencies, including the military,” Mr. Putin said. “It’s necessary to strictly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, to quickly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.”

Vladimir Putin met on Tuesday with the Moscow-appointed head of the Donetsk region.



Photo:

Mikhail Klimentyev/Associated Press

The Kremlin has cracked down on protests against the war or other domestic dissent this year, jailing thousands who publicly opposed the campaign or protested September’s call-up of draftees that prompted hundreds of thousands of fighting-age Russian men to leave the country.

Mr. Putin’s comments come as fighting continues to rage across most of the territories that Russia absorbed from Ukraine. Last week, Russian-installed officials in Donetsk and Luhansk accused Kyiv’s forces of shelling residential areas, schools and a hospital. Areas inside Russia have also been struck, including the border regions of Kursk and Belgorod, where on Sunday a rocket killed at least one person.

Meanwhile, Russia this week launched fresh waves of drone attacks against Ukraine as the country struggled to repair damaged energy infrastructure that has left millions without power. On Friday, a significant Russian cruise-missile attack against Ukrainian infrastructure targets left Kharkiv and several other cities, including the capital, Kyiv, without power, water and heating for several hours. Serhiy Kovalenko, the chief executive of Ukrainian energy company Yasno, said Tuesday that for residents of the capital, 10-hour blackouts are the new reality.

On absorbing the four new territories in September, Mr. Putin vowed that the people living in these areas would be part of Russia forever. Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

has pledged to retake the occupied areas, driving Russian forces from lands that he says rightfully belong to his nation.

In November, Russian forces ceded control of the city of Kherson, the only regional capital it had managed to take since invading Ukraine in February. The retreat marked the biggest setback in what the Kremlin calls its special military operation.

Ukrainian volunteers and servicemen distributed humanitarian aid to people in Kherson this week.



Photo:

sergey kozlov/Shutterstock

Western arms have helped Ukraine clinch a series of battlefield victories in recent months, but officials in Kyiv say the support so far isn’t enough to drive Russian forces out of all the territory they have occupied. Russia is betting that Western backing for Kyiv will wane as the war drags on and the cost of arming Ukraine and propping up its economy grows.

Mr. Putin has remained defiant, refusing to back down despite a series of international sanctions that have impaired Russia’s economy and amid growing isolation from the West.

On Tuesday, the Russian leader looked relaxed as he presided over a Kremlin ceremony to present the highest state award to those he described as “heroes, pioneers, creators, courageous and hardworking people who have made a huge contribution to the development of the country, who have proven themselves in our difficult but significant time.”

Among the recipients were the Russian-installed leaders of the illegally integrated Ukrainian regions.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com

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World

Ukraine Hits Hotel Hosting Russian Military

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KHERSON, Ukraine—Kyiv’s military demolished a hotel complex hosting dozens of Russian military personnel overnight with U.S.-supplied long-range artillery, while more Russian drone strikes continued to destroy Ukraine’s electricity grid. 

Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said 1.5 million people in Ukraine’s southern Odessa region were left without power after strikes late Saturday. Only critical infrastructure was connected to the power grid, he said, adding that restoring service could take longer than after previous attacks.

Air-raid sirens continued to sound in Ukraine on Sunday as Russia launched more strikes. 

Footage of the Ukrainian artillery strike against a hotel in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol showed burning buildings as well as dead and wounded Russian soldiers among the wreckage. Russian and Ukrainian social-media channels said there were dozens of casualties but gave varying death tolls.

Workers repair high-voltage power lines cut by missile strikes near Odessa, southern Ukraine.



Photo:

oleksandr gimanov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Ukrainian soldiers with a self-propelled howitzer near the front line in eastern Ukraine.



Photo:

ihor tkachov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The exiled Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol,

Ivan Fedorov,

wrote on his Telegram channel that as many as 200 Russian troops were “roasted” in the strike. The Russian-installed governor of the region said dozens were wounded and two killed.

Ukraine has been using U.S.-supplied long-range artillery, or Himars, to try to break up Russian troop concentrations behind the front lines so that Moscow can’t maneuver its forces for an attack. The strike on the hotel complex in Melitopol, located in southeastern Ukraine about 50 miles from the Sea of Azov, appeared to be at the limit of the range of the Himars munitions supplied by the U.S.

But Ukraine has so far been able to mount only a limited defense against Moscow’s campaign of missile and drone attacks. 

Missile strikes late Saturday that hit around Ukraine’s southern port city of Odessa “were critical,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address. 

“This is the true attitude of Russia toward Odessa, toward Odessa residents—deliberate bullying, deliberate attempt to bring disaster to the city,” he said.

A destroyed house in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.



Photo:

ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

Odessa regional officials didn’t say what exactly had been hit, but wrote on Facebook that repairing the damage could take two or three months. DTEK, one of the country’s largest energy companies, said almost the entire region was without power late Saturday, and that utility workers were giving priority to reconnecting hospitals and other critical infrastructure to the grid.

“The situation in the energy sector of Odessa region remains difficult,” DTEK wrote on Facebook. “According to preliminary forecasts, it will take much more time to restore energy facilities in the Odessa region than in the previous times after enemy shelling.”

Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly accused Russia of weaponizing the onset of winter to affect the civilian population and compel Kyiv to withdraw from its positions. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week acknowledged doing so and vowed to continue. “There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” Mr. Putin said. “Yes, we do that.”

Officials encouraged Odessa residents to go to government-established centers, which have power generators, to warm up and charge devices. In addition, Germany said it would donate 470 electric generators, at a cost of about $20 million. 

The attack on Odessa over the weekend suggested that Moscow has replenished its supply of drones following several weeks in which they had disappeared from Ukrainian skies. 

People embrace after arriving at the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.



Photo:

SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS

Meanwhile, Russia continued to step up its shelling of Kherson after withdrawing from the southern regional capital last month. Shelling hit critical infrastructure in the city on Saturday night, said regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych. A day earlier, shelling killed two people and injured eight others. 

Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, fired at Russian positions across the Dnipro River from inside the city. The sound of rockets whistled through neighborhoods near the river. 

Fierce fighting also continued in the area around Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine. Russian forces are attempting to regain the city, which they occupied in the early days of the invasion and into the summer before a Ukrainian counteroffensive drove them further into eastern Ukraine.

Many of the Russian personnel who were withdrawn from Kherson in the fall were redeployed to the east to bolster the Russian push toward Bakhmut, where trenches and other fortifications now resemble those seen in World War I.

Apartment buildings without electricity during a power outage in Odessa, southern Ukraine.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com

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World

Russia Launches New Drone Attacks as Partnership With Iran Deepens

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Russia launched fresh attacks with Iranian-made drones early Saturday over Ukraine, where the country’s southern command said it shot down 10 of the unmanned aerial systems, an indication that Moscow has replenished its supply of the drones as the two countries move toward what the U.S. has called a full defense partnership.

Ukraine’s southern command said it shot down four Shahed-136 drones in the Kherson region, four more in the Mykolaiv region and two in the Odessa region.

Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Odessa, said the drones had attacked energy infrastructure and civilian housing overnight.

“There is no electricity in nearly any of our region’s districts and communities of our region. Energy workers are already working on restoring the damaged infrastructure,” he said.

Russia purchased hundreds of Iranian Shahed and Mohajer series drones over the summer, which Moscow has used to attack Ukraine’s front-line positions and civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses, however, adapted quickly, shooting the entire batch down over a series of months.

The reappearance of the UAVs on the battlefield this week shows that Russia has resupplied its stocks as the West sees greater defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power grid in an attempt to break civilians’ will.



Photo:

Andrew Kravchenko/Associated Press

The streets of Kyiv in darkness during one of the city’s periodic blackouts to conserve power.



Photo:

oleg petrasyuk/Shutterstock

The Biden administration warned Friday that military ties between Russia and Iran were expanding into “a full-fledged defense partnership” and said the two nations were considering establishing a joint production line to provide lethal drones in Russia.

The U.S. said it believed Iran was considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, and described the military relationship between the two nations as moving beyond simply Iran supplying drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine.

The U.K.’s Defense Ministry warned Saturday that the missiles would be used to buttress Russia’s dwindling supply following months of sustained large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, meant to freeze Ukrainians ahead as winter temperatures dip. Russia has highly likely expended a large proportion of its stock of its own SS-26 Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, which carry a 500 kilogram warhead up to 300 miles, the ministry said.

“If Russia succeeds in bringing a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles into service, it will likely use them to continue and expand its campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure,” the ministry said on Twitter.

The worst of the strikes cut water supply in major cities and knocked out half of Ukraine’s power grid, forcing rolling blackouts across the country.

This week, Russian President

Vladimir Putin

admitted to targeting Ukraine’s power infrastructure, despite previously repeatedly asserting that Russia’s forces don’t hit civilian targets. He vowed to continue the campaign. 

A Ukrainian soldier takes a break from the front line near the Donbas city of Lyman.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Fighting has increased around Donbas, which Ukrainian forces retook this fall.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

“There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” Mr. Putin said. “Yes, we do that.”

Criticism of the strikes would “not interfere with our combat missions,” he said.

Russia’s deployment of drones in Ukraine’s south came as its forces are working to make incremental gains in the country’s eastern Donbas region, with much of the fighting concentrated around the city of Bakhmut. With much of Russia’s artillery ammunition running low, Russia has been forced to make gains on foot. 

Russian troops have also boosted fighting around the Donbas city of Lyman, which Ukrainian forces took earlier this fall, causing large portions of the Russian front line to crumble.

The “Russian enemy suffered the greatest losses of the past day near Bakhmut and Lyman,” Ukraine’s general staff said in a statement. 

Late Friday Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

held a meeting with officials from the Vatican City, following

Pope Francis

‘ increasingly harsh condemnation of the war. The pope has compared the suffering of Ukrainians to 20th century genocides.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

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Germany Arrests Suspects in QAnon-Inspired Coup Plot

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German authorities on Wednesday said they had dismantled a QAnon-inspired terrorist cell on suspicion of planning to overthrow the government.

Twenty-five people were arrested in the early hours of the day, 22 of whom are suspected of conspiring to foment a coup, the federal prosecutor said. Their alleged plans included an armed storming of the federal parliament. The other three, including a Russian citizen living in Germany, are suspected of supporting the group, the prosecutor said.

More than 3,000 police officers including special forces conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria, in one of the largest operations of its kind in recent history, officials said.

“This organization has, according to our knowledge, set the goal of using violence and military means to overthrow the existing liberal democratic order in Germany,” federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters Wednesday.

The far-right group, whose suspected leaders included a former elite paratrooper commander, had been attempting to recruit police and armed-forces members, and had sought to set up terrorist cells across Germany to help it install and maintain a military government, according to the prosecutor.

“The suspects are united in a deep rejection of the Federal Republic of Germany, which has in the course of time developed in a decision to initiate a violent coup for which they had made specific preparations,” the prosecutor said.

“The members of the organization understood that their endeavor could only be realized by using military means and violence against representatives of the state. This includes committing murders.”

“The people who had been arrested subscribe to conspiracy myths composed of different narratives of the Reichsbürger and the QAnon ideologies,” Mr. Frank said.

QAnon is a far-right, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of outlandish and unsubstantiated beliefs. It has spread worldwide from the U.S. and has been linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The German Reichsbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, movement doesn’t recognize the authority of the postwar government. Members have printed their own passports and other documents, and set up their own schools. Some factions seek to re-establish the German Empire that was dismantled after World War I.

Outside the U.S., QAnon online channels have their largest subscriber base in Germany, according to several assessments by extremism researchers. The conspiracy has been spreading rapidly in Germany since 2020, especially in the ranks of critics of the government’s Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, according to the German domestic intelligence agency. 

The agency said it considers the ideology a potential source of violence given its strongly anti-Semitic message, its legitimation of violence and its opposition to the state. In August 2020, protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions, some of them carrying “Q” banners, were blocked by police as they tried to storm the Reichstag building, home to the lower house of parliament.

There was no indication that members of the alleged cell were in contact with QAnon sympathizers in the U.S. 

The people detained on Wednesday included a sergeant serving with the KSK, the special military command of Germany, and a former lawmaker, as well as several former servicemen, including two colonels, officials said.

One of the alleged ringleaders was named by the prosecutor as Heinrich XIII P. R. The website of the Der Spiegel news weekly and other German news publications identified the man as Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, a 71-year-old prince and known far-right extremist. In a conference speech posted on YouTube in 2019, Mr. Reuss espoused anti-Semitic views and conspiracies about historic events and German politics.

More than 3,000 police officers conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria.



Photo:

TILMAN BLASSHOFER/REUTERS

Calls to a number appearing on what claims to be the prince’s website went unanswered and a lawyer for him couldn’t be identified.

Another alleged conspirator was identified by the prosecutor as Birgit M.-W. Der Spiegel and other German publications said the suspect was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, 58, a judge in Berlin and a former member of parliament for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party. 

A lawyer who has in the past represented Ms. Malsack-Winkemann declined to comment. 

After leaving parliament, Ms. Malsack-Winkemann resumed work as a judge in March. The Berlin state government later sought to have her removed from the bench, arguing that she had promoted extremist positions online and as a lawmaker. The Berlin administrative court rejected the government’s request in October, saying that it violated the principle of an independent justice.

Ms. Malsack-Winkemann was temporarily suspended as judge on Wednesday after an intervention of the president of the Berlin Regional Court, a spokeswoman for the court wrote in an email Wednesday. The spokeswoman didn’t mention the arrest.

Mr. Frank, the prosecutor, said eight of the people arrested had been remanded into custody by a judge.

One of the suspects arrested was a former police officer who had been involved in securing Jewish sites in the German state of Lower Saxony, according to the American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit.

“It now must be established that there is no security risk [for these sites],” the organization said in a tweet.

The suspected conspirators had set up several chat channels, primarily on social network Telegram, and had congregated in a property that one of them owned, officials said.

Weapons were secured during the raid and investigators are probing an alleged plan by the suspects to storm the German parliament and arrest legislators in an action that they hoped would bring about a collapse of the German government, according to the prosecutor.

It remains unclear, however, whether the group planned an imminent attack, or whether it had the capacity to pull out a coup in the 84-million-strong country. In addition to the 25 people who were taken into custody, there are another 27 suspects who haven’t been arrested, prosecutors said.

The suspects had been meeting in a format they called the council, a mock government cabinet headed by Mr. Reuss and designated ministers, which was supported by a military arm, according to prosecutors. The body was meant to govern Germany with the support of a military arm consisting of several retired officers in their 60s and one active serviceman. 

“The terror organization that was unearthed today was driven by violent takeover fantasies and conspiracy ideologies, according to the current state of the investigation,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. The police raid was conducted in very dangerous circumstances but fortunately no one was injured, Ms. Faeser added.

Ms. Faeser said that it was “especially bitter” that a former legislator was implicated in the alleged conspiracy.

One of the alleged leaders had established contacts with representatives of Russia in Germany to facilitate the planned takeover, the prosecutor said, adding that there was no evidence that the Russian officials responded positively to his advances. The Russian citizen who was arrested as a helper of the group is suspected of having facilitated such contacts.

There has been no involvement by the Russian government, which only found out about the case from media reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The Russian Embassy in Berlin said it learned of the raids from the news and was unfamiliar with any Russian citizens connected. Russian diplomatic representations in Germany don’t have contact with members of terrorist organizations, the embassy said.

There are more than 20,000 adherents of the Reichsbürger movement in Germany, including 2,100 potentially violent supporters, according to the latest annual report of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Several police officers and members of the armed forces have in the past been arrested in raids connected to the Reichsbürger and similar groups. While members of such groups from the ranks the armed forces and security and law-enforcement agencies constitute a small minority, the presence of rogue networks within the security establishment is an acutely sensitive matter because of Germany’s Nazi past.

The group that was foiled Wednesday had been set up around November 2021, driven by a belief that Germany is governed by a so-called “deep state” and would soon be freed by a so-called “alliance,” an alleged secret society of officials and military officers from various countries including the U.S. and Russia, the prosecutor said.

The group is suspected of having planned armed attacks on government institutions, said Germany’s justice minister, Marco Buschmann.

“Democracy is defending itself,” Mr. Buschmann tweeted Wednesday.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com

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