Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticised Croatian President Zoran Milanovic on Tuesday for saying Crimea would never return to Ukrainian control, describing his comment as “unacceptable.”

Russia seized the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. In remarks on Monday detailing his objection to Zagreb providing military aid to Kyiv, Milanovic said it was “clear that Crimea will never again be part of Ukraine”.

“We consider as unacceptable the statements of the president of Croatia, who effectively cast doubt on the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.

— Reuters

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov will be meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and his French defense counterpart Sebastien Lecornu in Paris Tuesday, with the thorny issue of fighter jets high on the agenda.

Ukraine has set its sights on receiving fighter jets, such as U.S. F-16s, from its allies, but the U.S. and Germany have already ruled out such weaponry, particularly given the fact they only greenlighted the sending of Western tanks to Ukraine last week.

For his part, President Joe Biden answered with an emphatic “no” when asked by reporters Monday if the U.S. would be sending jets to Ukraine.

There appears to be a softer attitude among some of Ukraine’s allies, however. with Poland and France signaling that the provision of fighter jets is not out of the question. On Monday, Macron said any offer would depend on several factors.

“Nothing is excluded in principle,” Macron said after talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte when asked about the possibility of sending jets to Kyiv as it battles Russia’s invasion, France 24 reported.

The conditions are that Ukraine must first make the request; that any arms would “not be escalatory”; and that they would “not be likely to hit Russian soil but purely to aid the resistance effort.” Macron added that any arms delivery “must not weaken the capacity of the French armed forces.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Russian forces are reportedly commandeering civilian medical facilities and turning them into “field hospitals” in order to treat wounded soldiers as casualties mount, Ukraine said Tuesday.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook claiming that Russian forces in Luhansk continue to “suffer heavy losses” and that they have “begun using additional civilian medical facilities to house wounded Russian invaders.”

Two hospitals in the city of Luhansk, including a maternity hospital, have become field hospitals where soldiers are being treated, Ukraine said. Because of that, the General Staff said maternity services can now only be offered at the Luhansk Regional Perinatal Center “where there is a catastrophic lack of space and risks and adverse conditions for childbirth.”

— Holly Ellyatt

In the last three days, Russia likely developed its probing attacks around the Donetsk towns of Pavlivka and Vuhledar into a “more concerted assault,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday.

The settlements lie around 30 miles southwest of the city of Donetsk, and Russia previously used the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade in an unsuccessful assault on the same area in November 2022, the Ministry noted on Twitter.

“Elements of the 155th are again involved as part of an at least brigade sized force which has likely advanced several hundred metres beyond the small Kashlahach River which marked the front line for several months.”

The ministry noted that Russian commanders are likely aiming “to develop a new axis of advance” into the Ukrainian-held part of the Donetsk region “and to divert Ukrainian forces from the heavily contested Bakhmut sector.”

“There is a realistic possibility that Russia will continue to make local gains in the sector,” the U.K. said, but it added that “it is unlikely that Russia has sufficient uncommitted troops in the area to achieve an operationally significant breakthrough.”

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters Monday afternoon that the U.S. would not send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

When asked by reporters whether he would send fighter jets to Kyiv, Biden replied with one word: “No.”

The U.S. and Germany only last week gave the greenlight to sending modern battle tanks to Ukraine after months of pleas from Kyiv for the tanks.

Within hours of receiving news that it would be receiving Western tanks, Kyiv renewed its calls for fighter jets, such as the U.S.’ F-16s, saying it needs all the firepower it can get sooner rather than later.

Biden’s comments come a day after his German counterpart, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, also ruled out sending jets to Ukraine, saying it seems “frivolous” to discuss the issue when allies had just approved the sending of tanks.

Ukraine’s defense minister is expected in Paris on Tuesday to meet French President Emmanuel Macron, with differences appearing to emerge between allies over F-16s.

News outlet Politico reported Monday that France is considering Ukraine’s request for fighter-jet pilot training, citing an aide to the country’s defense minister, while Poland has signaled its willingness to send such weaponry but said it would act in “full coordination” with its allies.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv and its Western partners will do everything necessary to make sure “Russia’s intentions to move to a new stage of offensive for the sake of revenge fail.”

“I am confident in our army. We will stop them all little by little, destroy them and prepare our big counteroffensive,” Zelenskyy said in an address alongside his Danish counterpart in Odesa.

Zelenskyy thanked Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen for providing financial and security assistance to Ukraine.

“I am grateful to the Danish coalition government for creating a separate fund to help our country. Reconstruction should become one of the key directions of the fund’s work,” Zelenskyy added.

— Amanda Macias

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on Facebook that the temporary representative of Ukraine was summoned to a meeting at Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran.

Nikolenko did not elaborate on the details of the meeting but added that Kyiv is not responsible for the string of explosions at Iranian facilities, according to an NBC News translation.

Over the weekend Iran said that bomb-carrying drones struck a defense manufacturing plant in the central city of Isfahan. The Iranian Defense Ministry did not share information on who it suspected of carrying out the strike.

— Amanda Macias

The European Union allocated 114 million euros to Poland’s new “rescEU energy hub” for Ukraine.

The hub will essentially be a logistics center for supplying emergency energy aid to Ukrainians amid Russian shelling on critical infrastructure. The funds will purchase approximately 1,000 generators to be distributed to Ukrainians through the hub.

The European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism has previously provided 1,400 generators to Ukrainians in need.

— Amanda Macias

EDITOR’S NOTE- Graphic Content- This post contains the image of a dead Ukrainian servicemen in Sloviansk.

Friends gather to bury Ukrainian serviceman, 28-year-old orphan Oleksandr Korovniy, at a cemetery in Sloviansk. Koroniy was a member of the Azov battalion, killed in action in Bakhmut, Donetsk region.

The Kremlin dismissed Boris Johnson’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike.

The former U.K. prime minister claimed in a BBC documentary that he’d had a phone call with Putin before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Johnson said in the show that Putin “threatened me at one point, and he said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ or something like that.”

“But I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate,” Johnson said.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the claim as a “lie” Monday, telling reporters “What Mr. Johnson said is not true. More precisely, it is a lie,” he said according to an NBC News translation of the comments.

“This may either be a deliberate lie by Mr. Johnson, and then the question arises as to the reasons for his presentation of such a version of events. Or he actually did not understand what President Putin was talking about with him. And in this case it becomes a little worrying for the interlocutors of our President,” Peskov said.

“But once again I officially repeat: this is a lie, there were no threats with missiles.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Kyiv wants to join the European Union within two years, setting a very ambitious timetable for joining the bloc.

Speaking to Politico, Shmyhal said “we have a very ambitious plan to join the European Union within the next two years … So we expect that this year, in 2023, we can already have this pre-entry stage of negotiations,” he said.

Ukraine has made no secret of its wish to join the EU and has already applied to join the bloc. It is not the only candidate country. Others, such as North Macedonia and Montenegro have waited over ten years for any progress in their own respective membership applications. French President Emmanuel Macron has said EU membership for Ukraine is likely to be a process that will take “decades.”

EU commissioners are heading to Kyiv on Friday to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Politco noted that their task will likely be “managing expectations” regarding such a tight timetable for entry into the EU.

— Holly Ellyatt

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to threaten him with a missile strike in what he described as an “extraordinary” phone call before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In an excerpt of a BBC documentary called “Putin vs the West,” Johnson says he spoke to Putin in February 2022, shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During that call, he said he told Putin that war would be an “utter catastrophe” and would entail sanctions on Moscow and likely more NATO troops on Russia’s borders.

Johnson said that after making those points during the call, in which he said Putin had been “very familiar,” Putin appeared to threaten him.

“He threatened me at one point, and he said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ or something like that,” Johnson said in the documentary, the BBC reported.

“But I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate.”

It’s impossible to ascertain whether Putin was serious in his comment but relations between the U.K. and Russia were already strained before the war, particularly after a Russian nerve agent attack carried out in the U.K. in 2018. The U.K.’s staunch support of Kyiv has heightened tensions.

— Holly Ellyatt

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted at the weekend that fighter jets would not be provided to Ukraine, telling a German newspaper that there should not be a “bidding war” over weaponry and that Germany “will not allow a war between Russia and NATO.”

Scholz reiterated Germany’s objections to sending fighter jets to Ukraine, telling the Tagesspiegel newspaper Sunday that there is no question of doing so.

“The question of combat aircraft does not arise at all,” Scholz said, according to Politico’s translation of the original story.

“I can only advise against entering into a constant competition to outbid each other when it comes to weapons systems,” he added.

Germany last week agreed to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine after months of resisting pressure to do so. Berlin also said it would allow other allies to send their own German-made tanks to Kyiv. The U.S. also agreed to send a number of M1 Abrams tanks.

Ukraine expressed gratitude for the decision to send tanks but immediately said it needed more firepower to counter Russia’s invasion, asking for fighter jets from its allies. One defense ministry advisor told CNBC he was sure Kyiv would receive F-16 fighter jets from its allies and that there should be no delay over the decision, as there was over tanks.

Over the weekend, another Ukrainian official said negotiations over the possible sending of attack aircraft to Ukraine were “ongoing.”

“Our partners understand how the war develops. They understand that attack aircraft are absolutely necessary to cover the manpower and armoured vehicles that they give us,” advisor to the head of the Office of the President Mykhailo Podolyak told the Freedom TV channel Saturday.

“In the same way, in order to drastically reduce the key tool of the Russian army – artillery, we need missiles. That’s why negotiations are already underway, negotiations are accelerating,” Podolyak said in comments translated by NBC News.

— Holly Ellyatt