- Poland summons Ukrainian ambassador over Zelenskiy remarks, Kyiv calls for calm Reuters.com
- U.N. General Assembly: Zelensky Criticizes the U.N. and Presents Peace Plan to End the War The New York Times
- Video: Polish president on what Ukraine must do as Putin’s war rages CNN
- NATO Nation Loses Cool On Ukraine; Poland Summons Envoy Over Zelensky Remarks | Kyiv Responds Hindustan Times
- Zelenskiy calls for Russia to lose UN veto power; UN chief says ‘humanity has opened gates of hell’ on climate – as it happened The Guardian
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Sean Penn: Will Smith slap wouldn’t have happened if Oscars had let Zelenskiy speak – The Guardian
- Sean Penn: Will Smith slap wouldn’t have happened if Oscars had let Zelenskiy speak The Guardian
- Sean Penn unleashes rage toward Will Smith for Chris Rock Oscar’s slap: ‘Worst moment as a person’ Fox News
- Sean Penn Rails on Oscars for Dissing Zelensky and Embracing Will Smith TMZ
- ‘Why the f**k did you just spit on yourself ’: Sean Penn furious at Will Smith over 2022 Oscars slap incident PINKVILLA
- “Why did I go to f—king jail for what you just did?”: Charlize Theron’s Explosive Ex-Partner Sean Penn Exposes Hollywood’s Hypocrisy For Letting Will Smith Go Scot-Free Despite Similar Crime FandomWire
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Zelenskiy in Berlin: we can make Russia’s defeat ‘irreversible’ – Reuters
- Zelenskiy in Berlin: we can make Russia’s defeat ‘irreversible’ Reuters
- Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy thanks Germany for support in Berlin visit The Guardian
- Zelenskiy: Ukraine, West can make Russia’s defeat ‘irreversible’ this year Yahoo News
- On Victory Day In Europe, Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Will Win As Prigozhin Claims Ammunition Arriving Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
- Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy thanks UK for Storm Shadow missiles; Kremlin denies ground lost in Bakhmut – as it happened The Guardian
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Ukraine in talks with allies about getting long-range missiles, Zelenskiy aide says
Jan 28 (Reuters) – Expedited talks are under way among Kyiv and its allies about Ukraine’s requests for long-range missiles that it says are needed to prevent Russia from destroying Ukrainian cities, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday.
Ukraine has won promises of Western battle tanks and is seeking fighter jets to push back against Russian and pro-Moscow forces, which are slowly advancing along part of the front line.
“To drastically reduce the Russian army’s key weapon – the artillery they use today on the front lines – we need missiles that will destroy their depots,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Ukraine’s Freedom television network. He said on the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula there were more than 100 artillery warehouses.
“Therefore, firstly, negotiations are already under way. Secondly, negotiations are proceeding at an accelerated pace,” he said without giving details.
Zelenskiy, speaking separately, said Ukraine wanted to preempt Russian attacks on Ukrainian urban areas and civilians.
“Ukraine needs long-range missiles … to deprive the occupier of the opportunity to place its missile launchers somewhere far from the front line and destroy Ukrainian cities,” he said in an evening video address.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed the U.S.-made ATACMS missile, which has a range of 185 miles (297km). Washington has so far declined to provide the weapon.
Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian air force denied a newspaper report that it intended to get 24 fighter jets from allies, saying talks were continuing, Ukraine’s Babel online outlet said.
Spain’s El Pais newspaper, citing Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat, said Ukraine initially wanted two squadrons of 12 planes each, preferably Boeing F-16 jets.
But in a statement to Babel, Ihnat said his comments to a media briefing on Friday had been misinterpreted.
“Ukraine is only at the stage of negotiations regarding aircraft. Aircraft models and their number are currently being determined,” he said.
Ihnat told the Friday briefing that F-16s might be the best option for a multi-role fighter to replace the country’s current fleet of ageing Soviet-era warplanes.
He also told Ukrainian national television that allied nations did not like public speculation about jets, Interfax Ukraine news agency said.
Deputy White House national security adviser Jon Finer on Thursday said United States would be discussing the idea of supplying jets “very carefully” with Kyiv and its allies.
Germany’s defence minister this week ruled out the idea of sending jets to Ukraine.
Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Zelenskiy ramps up anti-corruption drive as 15 Ukrainian officials exit | Ukraine
A number of Ukrainian officials have been dismissed or resigned over the last four days amid corruption allegations as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, attempts to take a zero-tolerance approach to the issue.
Fifteen senior officials have left their posts since Saturday, six of whom have had corruption allegations levelled at them by journalists and Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities.
The wave of changes started on Saturday when Ukraine’s deputy minister of infrastructure, Vasyl Lozinskyi, was detained by anti-corruption investigators and dismissed from his post. He was accused by prosecutors of inflating the price of winter equipment, including generators, and allegedly siphoning off $400,000. Investigators also found $38,000 in cash in his office.
After Lozinskyi’s detention, Zelenskiy vowed in his nightly address to take a zero-tolerance approach to corruption, a problem that has plagued Ukraine since independence.
“I want it to be clear: there will be no return to the way things used to be,” said the president.
Zelenskiy also said on Sunday that there would be “decisions” made on the issue of corruption this week, without specifying what they would be. The European Union has said Ukraine must meet anti-corruption standards before it can become a member.
Since Zelenskiy’s address, a further four senior officials implicated in separate corruption scandals have been dismissed or resigned.
They include Vyacheslav Shapovalov, the deputy minister of defence, under whose watch alleged inflated food contracts were said to be signed. He has not admitted to any wrongdoing. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, who was recorded by journalists driving a car belonging to prominent Ukrainian businessmen, has also denied any wrongdoing. Pavlo Halimon, the deputy head of Zelenskiy’s political party, has not commented on recent evidence presented by journalists that he bought a house in Kyiv above his means.
Also dismissed was Oleksiy Symonenko, the deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who went on holiday to Spain in late December in a Mercedes owned by a prominent Ukrainian businessman. In response to the scandal, Ukraine’s national security council on Monday banned officials from travelling abroad until the war ends, except for those on official business. Until Monday’s decisions, male officials were considered an exception to the ban on military-aged Ukrainian men leaving the country.
The shake-up continued on Tuesday afternoon with Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers announcing that five regional heads had been dismissed, only one of whom is being investigated for corruption, along with a further three deputy ministers and two heads of state agencies – none of whom stand accused of corruption.
The leading anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin said the dismissal of those accused of corruption is evidence that Ukraine’s newly formed anti-corruption system is working.
“Not only is the anti-corruption system working, but the politicians are learning to work in a new way,” said Shabunin. Shabunin gave the example of Lozinskyi, whose boss, Oleksiy Kubrakov, the minister of infrastructure, requested the cabinet of ministers dismiss him an hour after his detention and the search of his office.
Shabunin criticised Ukrainian defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov, however, for defending and not firing Shapovalov, his deputy minister in charge of logistics, when Ukraine’s ZN.UA publication published contracts on Saturday showing the price of some food for soldiers was several times higher than in a supermarket.
Shapovalov resigned on Tuesday in order, in his words, not to destabilise the Ukrainian army amid the accusations levied at the ministry.
Reznikov said the allegations were part of an information attack on the ministry and has ordered Ukraine’s security services to investigate who leaked the contracts.
Shabunin said the corruption scheme was “too primitive” for the public not to understand. According to the contracts obtained by journalists, a single egg cost 17 Ukrainian hryvnia (37p). The price of eggs, potatoes and cabbage are well-known in Ukraine, said Shabunin, who noted that wholesale prices should be lower than in the supermarket.
The ministry of defence has not denied the authenticity of the contract but insists the stated price was a technical error.
“The public have lost trust in Reznikov,” said Shabunin. “All (military) contracts are non-public because of the war and that is normal … but why should I now believe him that all the prices in the other contracts are OK? Everything is about trust.”
In a lengthy response on his Facebook page in English and Ukrainian, Reznikov did not deny the authenticity of the contracts. However, he said that the price of eggs was a technical error discovered in December and the person in charge at the ministry had been suspended when it was found. He also said he was willing to establish a parliamentary investigative committee as he was “confident (the ministry) had got it right”.
Corruption has been a thorny issue for Ukrainian journalists and activists since the war began. They worry that raising evidence of corruption could harm international support for their country’s war effort.
Shabunin said that, since the war, a silent contract has developed between activists and journalists and the authorities. “We will not criticise the authorities as we did before the war, but the authorities should in exchange very firmly and quickly react to any, even small-scale, corruption – as they did in the case of [Lozinskyi]. There, they fulfilled the social contract. But the ministry of defence has not.”
Shabunin added that the firing of Reznikov was the only way to reinstate confidence in Ukraine’s western partners.
The US is by far Ukraine’s biggest financial supporter. Its ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, said during a conference in Kyiv on Monday: “There can be no place in the future Ukraine for those who use state resources for their own enrichment. State resources should serve the people.”
Zelenskiy flags shake-up after corruption allegations
KYIV, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that changes would be announced imminently in the government, the regions and in the security forces following allegations of corruption nearly a year into Russia’s invasion.
Zelenskiy, elected by a landslide in 2019 on pledges to change the way government operated, did not identify in his nightly video address the officials to be replaced.
“There are already personnel decisions – some today, some tomorrow – regarding officials of various levels in ministries and other central government structures, as well as in the regions and in the law enforcement system,” Zelenskiy said.
The president said part of the crackdown would involve toughening oversight on travelling abroad for official assignments.
Ukrainian media outlets have reported that a number of cabinet ministers and senior officials could be sacked as Zelenskiy tries to streamline the government.
One of the president’s top allies earlier said corrupt officials would be “actively” jailed, setting out a zero-tolerance approach after the allegations came to light.
HISTORY OF CORRUPTION
Ukraine has a long history of corruption and shaky governance, though there have been few examples since last year’s invasion as Kyiv has sought Western financial and military support to help fight back Russian forces.
Anti-corruption police on Sunday said they had detained the deputy infrastructure minister on suspicion of receiving a $400,000 kickback to facilitate the import of generators into wartime Ukraine last September.
A committee of parliament agreed on Monday to toughen regulations on procurement after allegations in news reports that the defence ministry had overpaid suppliers for soldiers’ food. A draft law was to be introduced on partially making procurement prices public in times of conflict.
Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, quoted by media, told the committee that the reports were based on a “technical error” with no money changing hands.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau said it was aware of the media report and that it was investigating the possible crime of appropriation of funds or abuse of power with regard to procurement worth over 13 billion hryvnia ($352 million).
David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, said it had been made clear since Russia’s invasion that officials should “focus on the war, help victims, cut bureaucracy and stop dubious business”.
“Many of them got the message. But many of them did not unfortunately. We’re definitely going to be jailing actively this spring. If the humane approach doesn’t work, we’ll do it in line with martial law,” he said.
Timofiy Mylovanov, a former minister for the economy, trade and agriculture, praised the government’s “proactive and very fast” response to the allegations. He said the deputy infrastructure minister had been immediately fired and pointed to society’s “unprecedented” level of attention in the matter.
Ukraine, whose economy shrank by a third last year, is hugely dependent on Western financial aid and donors such as the International Monetary Fund and EU have repeatedly asked for more transparency and better governance.
($1 = 36.9250 hryvnias)
Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Olena Harmash; Editing by Peter Graff and Stephen Coates
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Zelenskiy attends memorial service for Ukraine helicopter crash victims | Ukraine
A tearful Volodymyr Zelenskiy attended a memorial service on Saturday for seven senior interior ministry officials killed in a helicopter crash this week.
The former interior minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy and five other high-ranking officials were killed when their French-made Super Puma helicopter crashed into a nursery on the eastern outskirts of Kyiv in foggy conditions on Wednesday.
Another seven people were also killed, including a child. Officials are investigating the cause of the crash.
The helicopter went down days after at least 45 people were killed in a Russian missile attack that partially levelled a block of flats in the south-eastern city of Dnipro.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are fending off an unrelenting Russian onslaught in the east, where Moscow has expended huge resources for incremental advances 11 months into its full-scale invasion.
“The indescribable sadness is covering the soul,” the Ukrainian president wrote in a Telegram post on Saturday. “Ukraine is losing its best sons and daughters every day.”
Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena Zelenska, paid their respects to the victims’ relatives inside the Ukrainian House cultural centre in central Kyiv. A crowd of mourners snaked outside toward Independence Square.
The country’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, described Monastyrskyi’s death as a huge loss.
“If it hadn’t been for Monastyrskyi, everything could have been completely different,” he told Ukrainian media, referring to the resistance Ukraine has mounted since Moscow launched its invasion on 24 February last year.
“He is a true hero of this country.”
Monastyrskyi had been flying to a location near the frontline, a police spokesperson said on Thursday.
Fierce fighting in Ukraine’s Soledar leaves battlefield strewn with corpses – Zelenskiy
KYIV/SIVERSK, Ukraine, Jan 10 (Reuters) – Russia has stepped up a powerful assault on Soledar in eastern Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said, forcing Ukrainian troops to repel waves of attacks led by the Wagner contract militia around the salt mining town and nearby fronts.
Soledar, in the industrial Donbas region, lies a few miles from Bakhmut, where troops from both sides have been taking heavy losses in some of the most intense trench warfare since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.
Ukrainian forces repelled an earlier attempt to take the town but a large number of Wagner Group units quickly returned, deploying new tactics and more soldiers under heavy artillery cover, Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said on Monday on the Telegram messaging app.
“The enemy literally step over the corpses of their own soldiers, using massed artillery, MLRS systems and mortars,” Malyar said.
Russia’s defence ministry did not mention either Soledar or Bakhmut in a regular media briefing on Monday, a day after facing criticism for an apparently false claim of a missile strike on a temporary Ukrainian barracks.
Wagner was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Drawing some recruits from Russia’s prisons and known for uncompromising violence, it is active in conflicts in Africa and has taken a prominent role in Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
Prigozhin has been trying to capture Bakhmut and Soledar for months at the cost of many lives on both sides. He said on Saturday its significance lay in a network of cavernous mining tunnels below the ground, which can hold big groups of people as well as tanks and other war machines.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said fighting in Bahkmut and Soledar is “the most intense on the entire frontline”, with little advancement by either side in the freezing conditions.
“So many (pro-Russian fighters) remain on the battlefield … either dead or wounded,” he said on YouTube.
“They attack our positions in waves, but the wounded as a rule die where they lie, either from exposure as it is very cold or from blood loss. No one is coming to help them or to collect the dead from the battlefield.”
Reuters could not immediately verify battlefield reports.
NO BUILDINGS INTACT
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in nightly video remarks on Monday that Bakhmut and Soledar were holding on despite widespread destruction.
He cited new and fiercer attacks in Soledar, where he said no walls have been left standing and the land is covered with Russian corpses.
“Thanks to the resilience of our soldiers in Soledar, we have won for Ukraine additional time and additional strength,” Zelenskiy said. He did not spell out what he meant by gaining time or strength.
[1/8] General view of railway lines, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Siversk, Ukraine, January 9, 2023. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
But Ukrainian officials, led by the commander in chief General Valery Zaluzhniy, have warned that Russia is preparing fresh troops for a new, major offensive on Ukraine, possibly on the capital Kyiv.
Zelenskiy also appears to be banking on securing more, sophisticated weapons from Ukraine’s Western partners to beat off attacks and eventually expel Russian troops.
On Monday, he pressed on with diplomatic efforts, speaking to Petr Fiala, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, current chair of the 27-member European Union.
“I am certain that our soldiers at the front will get these weapons and equipment. Very soon,” he said.
France, Germany and the United States all pledged last week to send armoured fighting vehicles, fulfilling a long-standing Ukrainian request. Britain is considering supplying Ukraine with tanks for the first time, Sky News reported, citing a Western source. Britain’s Defence Ministry did not comment.
Iran could be contributing to war crimes in Ukraine by providing drones to Russia, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday.
The United States has imposed sanctions on companies and people it accused of producing or transferring Iranian drones used by Russia. The White House said last week it is considering ways to target Iran’s production of the unmanned weaponised aircraft through sanctions and export controls.
WAVES OF ATTACK
Military analysts say the strategic military benefit for Russia of capturing Bakhmut and Soledar would be limited.
Taras Berezovets, a Ukrainian journalist, political commentator and officer in the Ukrainian army, said capturing Soledar made little sense, except as a personal victory for Prigozhin, however it would be easier to take than Bakhmut.
“It’s his personal war,” Berezovets said on YouTube.
A U.S. official has said Prigozhin is eyeing the salt and gypsum from the mines, believed to extend over 100 miles underground and contain auditorium-scale caverns.
Berezovets said Ukrainian troops fighting in Bakhmut and Soledar say attacks come in waves of small groups, no more than 15, with the first wave usually wiped out. The pro-Russian forces retrench and leave white ribbons for the next wave to follow.
“The complexity of fighting in cities like Bakhmut and Soledar is that it is hard to determine who is with you and who is the enemy,” he said.
In an evacuee centre in nearby Kramatorsk, Olha, 60, said she had fled Soledar after moving from apartment to apartment as each was destroyed in tank battles.
“There isn’t one house left intact. Apartments were burning, breaking in half,” said Olha, who gave only her first name.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel, Doina Chiacu and Michael Perry; Editing by Grant McCool, Lincoln Feast and Himani Sarkar
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Missile strikes on Ukraine kill one, Zelenskiy says Russians in league with the devil
KYIV, Dec 31 (Reuters) – Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least one person in Kyiv, in attacks President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said showed Moscow was in league with the devil.
The second barrage of major Russian missile attacks in three days badly damaged a Kyiv hotel and a residential building. Energy Minister German Galushchenko on Facebook said the strikes had not caused serious damage to the national power system.
Russia has been attacking vital Ukraine infrastructure since October with barrages of missile and drones, causing sweeping power blackouts as the cold weather bites.
Zelenskiy speaking in a video address noted that Russia had also launched attacks at Easter and Christmas.
“They call themselves Christians … but they are for the devil. They are for him and with him,” he said.
At least a dozen people were injured in the attacks. A Japanese journalist was among the wounded and taken to a hospital, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, later said it had cancelled emergency power outages in Kyiv and the surrounding region.
Zelenskiy in comments addressed to Russian speakers said President Vladimir Putin was destroying Russia’s future.
“No one will forgive you for terror. No one in the world will forgive you for this. Ukraine will not forgive,” he said, reiterating calls for allies to supply more anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems.
Army chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said air defences shot down 12 incoming cruise missiles, including six around the Kyiv region, five in the Zhytomyrskiy region and one in the Khmeltnytskiy region.
The cruise missiles had been launched from strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea hundreds of miles away and from land-based launchers, he said on Telegram.
[1/6] A local resident embraces his son as they stand next to a site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 31, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
“Russia’s mass missile attack is deliberately targeting residential areas, not even our energy infrastructure,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter after the attack.
“War criminal Putin ‘celebrates’ New Year by killing people,” Kuleba said, calling for Russia to be deprived of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets described the attack as “Terror on New Year’s Eve.”
NATIONWIDE BLASTS
Other cities across Ukraine also came under fire. In the southern region of Mykolaiv, local governor Vitaliy Kim on television said that six people had been wounded.
Kim in a separate post on Telegram said Russia had targeted civilians with the strikes, something Moscow has previously denied.
“According to today’s tendencies, the occupiers are striking not just critical (infrastructure) … in many cities (they are targeting) simply residential areas, hotels, garages, roads.”
In the western city of Khmelnytskyi, two people were wounded in a drone attack, Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. He also reported a strike in the southern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, which Tymoshenko said had damaged residential buildings.
Ukraine’s defence ministry responded on Telegram by saying: “With each new missile attack on civilian infrastructure, more and more Ukrainians are convinced of the need to fight until the complete collapse of Putin’s regime.”
Curfews ranging from 7 p.m. to midnight remained in place across Ukraine, making celebrations for the start of 2023 impossible in public spaces.
Several regional governors posted messages on social media warning residents not to break restrictions on New Year’s Eve.
(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in the headline)
Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk and David Ljunggren; Writing by Max Hunder and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Hugh Lawson, David Holmes and Mark Porter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Russia Holds 3,000 POWs, Zelenskiy Adviser Says
(Bloomberg) — An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had confirmed that it was holding more than 3,000 prisoners of war. She added that 15,000 people were missing, many of them civilians.
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Russia unleashed one of the most intense missile barrages of the war, targeting major Ukrainian cities including the capital, Kyiv, and Lviv in the west near Poland.
Of 69 cruise missiles launched by Kremlin forces from strategic bombers and ships in the Black Sea, 54 were shot down by air-defense systems, according to Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s army commander-in-chief. In a separate incident, Belarus said its air defense shot down a Ukrainian anti-air rocket over its territory.
The US is considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine as part of a further package of military support, according to people familiar with the matter.
(See RSAN on the Bloomberg Terminal for the Russian Sanctions Dashboard.)
Key Developments
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Russia Fires Heavy Salvo on Ukraine, Ruling Out Peace Talks
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Belarus Says Its Air Defense Shot Down Ukrainian Missile
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European Gas Rebounds Amid Mixed Weather Forecasts for January
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Russian Tycoon Urges Africa to Press EU on Fertilizer Snarl
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Ship Insurers’ Exodus From Russia-Ukraine Trades Gathering Pace
On the Ground
Overnight, Russian forces hit energy infrastructure in Kharkiv with Iranian-made Shahed drones, killing one person, Ukrainian officials said, adding that air-defense forces shot down 11 Iranian-made drones. Several buildings, a gas pipeline and a power line were damaged in an attack on the Zaporizhzhia suburbs, Oleksandr Starukh, the regional governor, said on Telegram. Three Russian missile carriers are now on combat duty in the Black Sea, according to a statement from the Ukrainian southern command.
(All times CET)
15,000 People Missing, Zelenskiy Adviser Says (12 a.m.)
Aliona Verbytska, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said Russia had confirmed that it was holding more than 3,000 prisoners of war. She said 15,000 people were missing, many of them civilians.
Verbytska, in her capacity as ombudsperson for the rights of Ukrainian soldiers, underscored the discrepancy between the number of confirmed POWs and the number still missing.
“We do not know what happened to them. Whether they are also Russian prisoners of war, have been taken from Russian-occupied territories or possibly killed,” Verbytska said. She assailed what she called the “very poor” cooperation of Russian agencies, with regards to dealing with prisoners of war.
US Considers Sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles (7:54 p.m.)
The US government is considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine as part of a further package of military support, according to people familiar with the matter.
A final decision hasn’t yet been made, one of the people said. When the vehicles would be operational is also unclear, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.
“Bradleys would provide a major increase in ground combat capability because it is, in effect, a light tank,” said Mark Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst who’s now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Read the full story here.
Ukraine Says Russia May Have Staged Provocation in Belarus (6:47 p.m.)
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that the reported shootdown of a rocket over Belarus may have been “a deliberate provocation made by Russia.”
“Ukraine is aware of the Kremlin’s desperate and persistent efforts to involve Belarus in its aggressive war against Ukraine,” the ministry said in the statement on its website. It said Ukraine is “ready to conduct an objective investigation of the incident.”
Earlier, Belarus’s Foreign Ministry summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Kyzym to voice a protest against what the country’s authorities say was the launch of an air defense missile toward Belarus.
Ukrainian Energy System Being Restored After Attack (5:42 p.m.)
Ukraine’s energy network, which suffered new damage after a Russian missile barrage on Thursday, is being repaired as planned, grid operator CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said on TV.
“A significant part of the generating capacity has already been restored, but there is damage to the network,” Kudrytskyi said, adding that some sites had been hit as many as eight times. “No matter how many times Russia strikes, we are restoring facilities.”
Kudrytskyi also said his company, Ukrenergo, would receive a 70 million-euro grant from the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development to restore energy infrastructure.
Belarus Summons Ukrainian Ambassador Over Missile Incident (4:20 p.m.)
Belarus’s Foreign Ministry summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Kyzym to voice protest against what the country’s authorities say was a launch of an air defense missile toward Belarus.
Minsk called on Ukraine to investigate Thursday’s missile launch, punish those responsible and apply measures to rule out such incidents in the future to avoid “catastrophic consequences”, according to a statement on Foreign Ministry website.
Kyiv has accused Belarus of allowing Russia to launch missiles from its territory. Russia has used Belarus as a staging point for its invasion, but Belarusian troops have so far stayed out of the war.
Belarus Says it Downed Missile Fired From Ukraine (1:55 p.m.)
Belarus said its air defenses shot down a Ukrainian S-300 missile that flew into its territory Thursday — a rare instance of the war spilling over the border into Russia’s ally, where an official downplayed the incident.
Missile debris fell near the village of Gorbakha in the Ivanovo region of southern Belarus near the border with Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said Thursday on Telegram.
“There is absolutely no reason for residents to worry,” the military commissar of the Brest region in Belarus said after the incident. “Such cases, unfortunately, happen.”
Italy’s Meloni to Visit Ukraine by End of February (2:05 p.m.)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is planning to visit Kyiv before the end of February to mark her support to Ukraine. A final date will only be confirmed when security conditions will allow for the planning of the visit, she said.
“We need to do all we can to support Ukraine but also to pursue peace possibilities,” she said at a news conference in Rome.
Putin, Xi to Hold Talks on Friday (12:15 p.m.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, will discuss “the most pressing regional problems” during a video call planned for Friday, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The two leaders are holding their end-of-year talks after Xi told former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week that China would like to see negotiations on Ukraine, adding that his administration was “actively promoting peace.” China has avoided criticizing Russia over the invasion, blaming the expansion of NATO. While Beijing signed off on a communique at last month’s Group of 20 summit in Indonesia that said “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine,” China continues to refrain from calling it a war.
Kazakhstan Seeks Druzhba Capacity (12 p.m.)
Russia’s oil-pipeline operator Transneft PJSC said it received a request from its Kazakh counterpart to book capacity on the Druzhba pipeline for oil supplies to Germany next year.
That could be a first step toward Kazakh oil flowing to German refineries as the country tries to find alternatives to Russian crude. While pipeline supplies are exempted from European sanctions, Germany pledged to wean itself off Russia by the end of this year.
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