KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — One was asked to be an informant for Russia. Another's 16-year-old son was abducted as leverage. A third is still in Russian custody. Here are just a few portraits of prominent Ukrainian politicians, journalists, pastors and more who ended up on Russian lists for abduction, in an effort to strip Ukraine of its leaders.
Two carloads of Russians came for Viktor Maruniak on his 60th birthday.
It was March 21. Maruniak, the head of Stara Zburivka village, in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, said he and three other local men were taken to a nearby hotel, blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten, strangled and forced to strip naked in below zero weather.
“They’d point a gun toward our heads or toward the head of someone else, saying if you don’t say something, we will kill them,” Maruniak said. “Something was turned off in my head. It helped me survive. I was out of my body.”
After several days, he said, he was taken to a second detention center and tortured with electric shocks. They asked where weapons were stored. He said his captors’ vehicles and uniforms, along with documents he spotted and conversations he overheard, indicated that he had been taken by a special paramilitary police force under Russia’s National Guard.
To his surprise, he was released three weeks later, on the condition that he return to his village as an informant.
Instead, he fled to Latvia. He said he had nine broken ribs. Photographs taken after his ordeal show him thin and withered, with injuries to his hands, back, buttocks and leg. He looks with a level gaze at the camera, a man beyond shock or sorrow, as if nothing human beings might do to each other would surprise him anymore.
“They kept kidnapping people in my village,” he said. “Nobody knows where they are kept and why they are kidnapped.”
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did you see the maga tears about how zelenskyy was dressed last night at the address?
also, why did boebert and gaetz neither applaud or stand at any point during the address? hmmmmm.
Tom Cotton didn't even show.
he is one of these guys that will be like "wHy ShOuLd We GiVe UkRaInE aId WhEn We HaVe AmErICaNs ThAt NeEd HeAlTh InSuRaNcE aNd HoUsInG??" all while opposing all 3 of those things.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
did you see the maga tears about how zelenskyy was dressed last night at the address?
also, why did boebert and gaetz neither applaud or stand at any point during the address? hmmmmm.
Tom Cotton didn't even show.
These guys are shameless. Part of me says every dem should just resign and refuse to run and let them have a 100% repub majority just so the "Murican people can see how quickly of a shit show their incompetence and backward way of thinking/vision would be if it ever came to fruition. These folks aren't going away.
The peculiar Russian missile 'cemetery' in eastern Ukraine
By VASILISA STEPANENKO
Today
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has a peculiar “cemetery,” one that recalls some of the worst damage done since the Russian invasion: the debris of rockets used against this town and its people.
The graveyard has more than a thousand missiles, or parts of them. Local authorities hope they can help provide information for any prosecution case against Russians authorities and soldiers. And one day, maybe, they will become part of a museum of the atrocities in the country.
The blueish cylinders are lined up in rows according to their size, making an impressive if shocking sight from the air.
Dmytro Chubenko, spokesman for the Kharkiv region’s Prosecutor Office, said that the rockets have been collected since the first attacks, and after some time officials decided to organize them by type.
“These are pieces of evidence that an international criminal court would use,” he said during a visit to the place. He mentioned that some specialists have already come to the city to analyze the material.
The missiles, he added, were used against some important residential areas, like North Saltivka and Oleksiivka. He said that the authorities estimate that at least 1,700 people have been killed by shelling, including 44 children, in Kharkiv and its surroundings.
In summer, the buildings in areas like Saltivka were severely damaged, some blackened and others crumbling. There were practically no activities, with shops closed and apartments destroyed. The winter has not improved anything.
“We have lost everything, and it is not clear at all what we can expect in the future,” said Anna, a North Saltivka resident who left months ago and who didn't give her last name for security reasons.
Ihor Deshpetko, 44, still lives in Kharkiv, despite what he has to suffer.
"There is no heating in my house, (and) unfortunately there won't be until the end of the winter,” he said, adding that he now tends to call the area he lives the “black neighborhood.”
Back in the missiles “cemetery,” Chubenko, from the prosecutors' office, said that they will keep the rockets as long as needed so any expert or prosecutor can take the information they need to use as evidence against Russians.
And after that?
“I don’t know what will happen next," he said. “Maybe we will make a museum.”
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Chiming in late. I thought the speech was great and it definitely swayed me more on the support of all the spending. Like many professional commentators have stated if we are funding them to defend themselves and retake their territory it is a lot cheaper than if we were to enter open war with Russia and send our own people over. I saw figures that we have already spent more on Ukraine than Russia spends on its entire military. If true, I would think Russia would go broke soon.
As far as the sweatsuit. I don't think it showed a lack of decorum or anything, but it did seem a little bit like a scene made for an epic film that was intended to help influence things from a PR angle, especially with the unfurling of the Ukrainian flag. I can't blame them for trying whatever they have to do to garner support though.
Chiming in late. I thought the speech was great and it definitely swayed me more on the support of all the spending. Like many professional commentators have stated if we are funding them to defend themselves and retake their territory it is a lot cheaper than if we were to enter open war with Russia and send our own people over. I saw figures that we have already spent more on Ukraine than Russia spends on its entire military. If true, I would think Russia would go broke soon.
As far as the sweatsuit. I don't think it showed a lack of decorum or anything, but it did seem a little bit like a scene made for an epic film that was intended to help influence things from a PR angle, especially with the unfurling of the Ukrainian flag. I can't blame them for trying whatever they have to do to garner support though.
Propaganda is a real thing. And that wasn't just for the US audience, but his people back home. If you're on the front lines or a wife/mother worried about your soldier, seeing Z garnering the full attention of the world's most powerful deliberative body and unfurling the flag must be quite stirring and motivating. Makes me tear up just a touch.
Chiming in late. I thought the speech was great and it definitely swayed me more on the support of all the spending. Like many professional commentators have stated if we are funding them to defend themselves and retake their territory it is a lot cheaper than if we were to enter open war with Russia and send our own people over. I saw figures that we have already spent more on Ukraine than Russia spends on its entire military. If true, I would think Russia would go broke soon.
As far as the sweatsuit. I don't think it showed a lack of decorum or anything, but it did seem a little bit like a scene made for an epic film that was intended to help influence things from a PR angle, especially with the unfurling of the Ukrainian flag. I can't blame them for trying whatever they have to do to garner support though.
Propaganda is a real thing. And that wasn't just for the US audience, but his people back home. If you're on the front lines or a wife/mother worried about your soldier, seeing Z garnering the full attention of the world's most powerful deliberative body and unfurling the flag must be quite stirring and motivating. Makes me tear up just a touch.
Chiming in late. I thought the speech was great and it definitely swayed me more on the support of all the spending. Like many professional commentators have stated if we are funding them to defend themselves and retake their territory it is a lot cheaper than if we were to enter open war with Russia and send our own people over. I saw figures that we have already spent more on Ukraine than Russia spends on its entire military. If true, I would think Russia would go broke soon.
As far as the sweatsuit. I don't think it showed a lack of decorum or anything, but it did seem a little bit like a scene made for an epic film that was intended to help influence things from a PR angle, especially with the unfurling of the Ukrainian flag. I can't blame them for trying whatever they have to do to garner support though.
Propaganda is a real thing. And that wasn't just for the US audience, but his people back home. If you're on the front lines or a wife/mother worried about your soldier, seeing Z garnering the full attention of the world's most powerful deliberative body and unfurling the flag must be quite stirring and motivating. Makes me tear up just a touch.
Some Ukrainians move up Christmas to part ways with Russia
By RENATA BRITO and HANNA ARHIROVA
18 mins ago
BOBRYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainians usually celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, as do the Russians. But not this year, or at least not all of them.
Some Orthodox Ukrainians have decided to observe Christmas on Dec. 25, like many Christians around the world. Yes, this has to do with the war, and yes, they have the blessing of their local church.
The idea of commemorating the birth of Jesus in December was considered radical in Ukraine until recently, but Russia's invasion changed many hearts and minds.
In October, the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is not aligned with the Russian church and one of two branches of Orthodox Christianity in the country, agreed to allow faithful to celebrate on Dec. 25.
The choice of dates has clear political and religious overtones in a nation with rival Orthodox churches and where slight revisions to rituals can carry potent meaning in a culture war that runs parallel to the shooting war.
For some people, changing dates represents a separation from Russia, its culture, and religion. People in a village on the outskirts of Kyiv voted recently to move up their Christmas observance.
“What began on Feb. 24, the full-scale invasion, is an awakening and an understanding that we can no longer be part of the Russian world,” Olena Paliy, a 33-year-old Bobrytsia resident, said.
The Russian Orthodox Church, which claims sovereignty over Orthodoxy in Ukraine, and some other Eastern Orthodox churches continue to use the ancient Julian calendar. Christmas falls 13 days later on that calendar, or Jan. 7, than it does on the Gregorian calendar used by most church and secular groups.
The Catholic Church first adopted the modern, more astronomically precise Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, and Protestants and some Orthodox churches have since aligned their own calendars for purposes of calculating Christmas.
The Synod of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine decreed in October that local church rectors could choose the date along with their communities, saying the decision followed years of discussion but also resulted from the circumstances of the war.
In Bobrytsia, some members of the faith promoted the change within the local church, which recently transitioned to being part of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with no ties to Russia. When a vote was taken last week, 200 out of 204 people said yes to adopting Dec. 25 as the new day to celebrate Christmas.
“This is a big step because never in our history have we had the same dates of celebration of Christmas in Ukraine with the whole Christian world. All the time we were separated,” said Roman Ivanenko, a local official in Bobrytsia, and one of the promoters of the change. With the switch, he said, they are “breaking this connection” with the Russians.
As in all the Kyiv region, Sunday morning in Bobrytsia began with the sound of sirens, but that didn’t prevent people from gathering in the church to attend a Christmas Mass on Dec. 25 for the first time. In the end, there were no attacks reported in the capital.
“No enemy can take away the holiday because the holiday is born in the soul,” the Rev. Rostyslav Korchak said in his homily, during which he used the words “war,” “soldiers,” and “evil” more than “Jesus Christ.”
Anna Nezenko, 65, attended the church in Bobrytsia on every Christmas since the building was inaugurated in 2000, although always on Jan. 7th. She said she did not feel strange doing so Sunday.
“The most important is the God to be born in the heart,” she said.
In 2019, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, granted complete independence, or autocephaly, to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Ukrainians who favored recognition for a national church in tandem with Ukraine’s political independence from the former Soviet Union had long sought such approval.
The Russian Orthodox Church and its leader, Patriarch Kirill, fiercely protested the move, saying Ukraine was not under the jurisdiction of Bartholomew.
The other major branch of Orthodoxy in the country, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, remained loyal to Moscow until the outbreak of war. It declared independence in May, though it remains under government scrutiny. That church has traditionally celebrated Christmas on Jan. 7.
____
Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. The Associated Press religion correspondent, Peter Smith, contributed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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The AP Interview: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO and HANNA ARHIROVA
Just now
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s foreign minister said Monday that his nation wants a summit to end the war but he doesn’t anticipate Russia taking part, a statement making it hard to foresee the devastating invasion ending soon.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press that his government wants a “peace” summit within two months at the United Nations with Secretary-General António Guterres as mediator.
Kuleba said that Russia must face a war-crimes tribunal before his country directly talks with Moscow. He said, however, that other nations should feel free to engage with Russians, as happened before a grain agreement between Turkey and Russia.
The AP interview offered a glimpse at Ukraine's vision of how the war with Russia could one day end, although any peace talks would be months away and highly contingent on complex international negotiations.
Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government had made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.
Kuleba said during the interview at the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023.
“Every war ends in a diplomatic way," he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week that no Ukrainian peace plan can succeed without taking into account “the realities of today that can’t be ignored” — a reference to Moscow’s demand that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed in 2014, as well as other territorial gains.
Kuleba said the Ukrainian government would like to have the “peace” summit by the end of February.
“The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country," he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”
At the Group of 20 summit in Bali in November, Zelenskyy made the long-distance presentation of a 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Asked about whether they would invite Russia to the summit, he said that Moscow would first need to face prosecution for war crimes at an international court.
“They can only be invited to this step in this way," Kuleba said.
About U.N. Secretary-General's role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”
The U.N. spokesman’s office had no immediate comment.
Other world leaders have also offered to mediate, such as those in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
The foreign minister again downplayed comments by Russian authorities that they are ready for talks.
"They (Russians) regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed few days ago that his country is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine, but suggested that the Ukrainians are the ones refusing to take that step. Despite Putin's comments, Moscow's forces have kept attacking Ukraine — a sign that peace isn't imminent.
Zelenskyy's visit to the U.S. was his first foreign trip since the war started on Feb. 24. Kuleba praised Washington's efforts and underlined the significance of the visit.
"This shows how both the United States are important for Ukraine, but also how Ukraine is important for the United States,” said Kuleba, who was part of the delegation to the U.S.
Ukraine secured a new $1.8 billion military aid package, including a Patriot missile battery, during the trip.
Kuleba said that the move “opens the door for other countries to do the same.”
He said that the U.S. government developed a program for the missile battery to complete the training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield.”
While Kuleba didn't mention a specific time frame, he said only that it will be "very much less than six months." And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine.
During Russia’s ground and air war in Ukraine, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying Ukraine's message and needs to an international audience, whether through Twitter posts or meetings with friendly foreign officials.
On Monday, Ukraine called on U.N. member states to deprive Russia of its status as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and to exclude it from the world body. Kuleba said they have long “prepared for this step to uncover the fraud and deprive Russia of its status.”
The Foreign Ministry says that Russia never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and taking the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“This is the beginning of an uphill battle, but we will fight, because nothing is impossible,” he told the AP.
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Sitting ducks? Russian military flaws seen in troop deaths
By FELIPE DANA and JOANNA KOZLOWSKA
Today
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian military’s top brass came under increasing scrutiny Wednesday as more details emerged of how at least 89 Russian soldiers, and possibly many more, were killed in a Ukrainian artillery attack on a single building.
The scene last weekend in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka, where the soldiers were temporarily stationed, appears to have been a recipe for disaster. Hundreds of Russian troops were reportedly clustered in a building close to the front line, well within range of Ukraine’s Western-supplied precision artillery, possibly sitting close to an ammunition store and perhaps unwittingly helping Kyiv’s forces to zero in on them.
It was one of the deadliest single attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and the highest death toll in a single incident acknowledged so far by either side in the conflict.
Ukraine’s armed forces claimed the Makiivka strike killed around 400 Russian soldiers housed in a vocational school building. About 300 more of them were wounded, officials alleged. It wasn't possible to verify either side's claims due to the fighting.
The Russian military sought to blame the soldiers for their own deaths. Gen. Lt. Sergei Sevryukov said in a statement late Tuesday that their phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike.
Emily Ferris, a research fellow on Russia and Eurasia at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told The Associated Press it is “very hard to verify” whether cellphone signaling and geolocation were to blame for the accurate strike.
She noted that Russian soldiers on active duty are forbidden from using their phones — exactly because there have been so many instances in recent years of their being used for targeting, including by both sides in the Ukraine war. The conflict has made ample use of modern technology.
She also noted that blaming the soldiers themselves was a “helpful narrative” for Moscow as it helps deflect criticism and steer attention toward the official cellphone ban.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to move the conversation along, too, as he took part via video link in a sending-off ceremony Wednesday for a frigate equipped with the Russian navy’s new hypersonic missiles.
Putin said the Zircon missiles that the Admiral Gorshkov frigate was carrying were a “unique weapon,” capable of flying at nine times the speed of sound and with a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). Russia says the missiles can't be intercepted.
Meanwhile, away from the battlefields, France said Wednesday it will send French-made AMX-10 RC light tanks to Ukraine — the first tanks from a Western European country — following an afternoon phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
The French presidency didn't say how many tanks would be delivered and when. The NATO member has given Ukraine anti-tank and air defense missiles and rocket launchers.
Later Wednesday, President Joe Biden confirmed that the U.S. is considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine. The Bradley is a medium armored combat vehicle that can carry about 10 personnel, or be configured to carry additional ammunition or communications equipment.
The Pentagon has already provided Ukraine with more than 2,000 combat vehicles, including 477 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles and more than 1,200 Humvees.
The weekend Makiivka strike seemed to be the latest blow to the Kremlin’s military prestige as it struggles to advance the invasion of its neighbor.
But Ferris, the analyst, said “there should be a bit of caution around leaning too heavily on this (attack) as a sign of (the) Russian army’s weakness.”
As details of the strike have trickled out in recent days, some observers detected military sloppiness at the root of so many deaths.
U.K. intelligence officials said Wednesday that Moscow’s “unprofessional” military practices were likely partly to blame for the high casualties.
“Given the extent of the damage, there is a realistic possibility that ammunition was being stored near to troop accommodation, which detonated during the strike, creating secondary explosions,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said on Twitter.
In the same post, the ministry said the building struck by Ukrainian missiles was little more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the front line, within “one of the most contested areas of the conflict,” in the partially Russian-occupied Donetsk region.
“The Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage from well before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate,” the update added.
The Russian Defense Ministry, in a rare admission of losses, initially said the strike killed 63 troops. But as emergency crews searched the ruins, the death toll mounted. The regiment’s deputy commander was among the dead.
That stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the broader military campaign is being handled by the Ministry of Defense.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known military blogger, accused Russian generals of “demonstrating their own stupidity and misunderstanding of what’s going on (among) the troops, where everyone has cellphones.”
“Moreover, in places where there’s coverage, artillery fire is often adjusted by phone. There are simply no other ways,” Tatarsky wrote in a Telegram post.
Others blamed the decision to station hundreds of troops in one place. “The cellphone story is not too convincing,” military blogger Semyon Pegov wrote. “The only remedy is not to house personnel en masse in large buildings. Simply not to house 500 people in one place but spread them across 10 different locations.”
Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilized reservists from the region of Samara, in southwestern Russia.
The Institute for the Study of War saw in the incident further evidence that Moscow isn’t properly utilizing the reservists it began calling up last September.
“Systemic failures in Russia’s force generation apparatus continue to plague personnel capabilities to the detriment of Russian operational capacity in Ukraine,” the think tank said in a report late Tuesday.
Ferris, of the Royal United Services Institute, said the Makiivka strike shows the Russian army is more interested in growing its number of troops, not in training them in wartime skills.
“That’s really how Russia conducts a lot of its warfare — by overwhelming the enemy with volume, with people,” she said. "The Kremlin view, unfortunately, is that soldiers’ lives are expendable.”
In a grinding battle of attrition, Russian forces have pressed their offensive on Bakhmut in Donetsk despite heavy losses. The Wagner Group, a private military contractor owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman with close ties to Putin, has spearheaded the Bakhmut offensive.
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that convicts Wagner pulled from prisons accounted for 90% of Russian casualties in fighting for Bakhmut, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the finding.
The White House said last month that intelligence findings showed Wagner had some 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 40,000 recruited convicts. The U.S. assesses that Wagner is spending about $100 million a month in the fight.
___
Kozlowska reported from London. Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
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Putin orders 36-hour holiday cease-fire in Ukraine
By ANDREW MELDRUM
9 mins ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered Moscow’s armed forces to observe a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war.
Putin did not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on a Ukrainian agreement to follow suit, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually halt on the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line. Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed Russian peace moves as playing for time to regroup their forces and prepare for additional attacks.
At various points during the war that started on Feb. 24, Putin has ordered limited and local truces to allow evacuations of civilians or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday's order was the first time Putin directed his troops to observe a cease-fire throughout Ukraine.
“Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ,” according to Putin’s order, addressed to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and published on the Kremlin’s website.
Putin acted at the suggestion of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who proposed a truce from noon Friday through midnight Saturday, local time. The Russian Orthodox Church, which uses the ancient Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7 — later than the Gregorian calendar — although some Christians in Ukraine also mark the holiday on that date.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed Kirill's call as “a cynical trap and an element of propaganda.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had proposed a Russian troop withdrawal earlier, before Dec. 25, but Russia rejected it.
Kirill has previously justified the war as part of Russia's “metaphysical struggle” to prevent a liberal ideological encroachment from the West.
Adding to the possibility of a cease-fire were diplomatic efforts. Putin spoke by phone with Turkey’s president on Thursday and the Kremlin said Putin “reaffirmed Russia’s openness to a serious dialogue” with Ukrainian authorities.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Putin to implement a “unilateral cease-fire,” according to a statement from the Turkish president’s office.
Erdogan also told Zelenskyy later by telephone that Turkey was ready to mediate a “lasting peace.” Erdogan has made such an offer frequently. It has already helped broker a deal allowing Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain, and it has facilitated a prisoner swap.
Russia's professed readiness came with the usual preconditions: that “Kyiv authorities fulfill the well-known and repeatedly stated demands and recognize new territorial realities,” the Kremlin said, referring to Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia and acknowledge other illegal territorial gains.
Previous attempts at peace talks have fallen at that hurdle, as Ukraine demands that Russia withdraws from occupied areas at the very least.
Elsewhere, the head of NATO said he detected no change in Moscow’s stance on Ukraine, insisting that the Kremlin “wants a Europe where they can control a neighboring country.”
“We have no indications that President Putin has changed his plans, his goals for Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Oslo.
Ukraine's Western allies have renewed a vow to keep supporting Kyiv for as long as it takes to defeat Russia.
In the latest pledge of military help, the French Defense Ministry said it plans talks soon with its Ukrainian counterpart on delivering armored combat vehicles. France’s presidency says it will be the first time this type of Western-made wheeled tank destroyer is sent to Ukraine's military.
Also, U.S. President Joe Biden said Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a medium armored combat vehicle that can serve as a troop carrier, could be sent to Ukraine.
The fighting in Ukraine has increasingly become a war of attrition in recent weeks, as winter sets in.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said Thursday at least five civilians were killed and eight wounded across the country by Russian shelling in the previous 24 hours.
The ongoing intense battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut has left 60% of the city in ruins, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Thursday. Ukrainian defenders were holding the Russians back, but the Kremlin's forces have pummeled the city with months of relentless shelling.
Taking the city in the Donbas region, an expansive industrial area bordering Russia, would not only give Putin a major battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it also would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open the way for Moscow's forces to press on toward key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.
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When Russia bombs a building full of people, this is the aftermath By Siobhán O'Grady and Anastacia Galouchka January 14, 2023 at 18:38 ET DNIPRO, Ukraine — Two hours after a Russian missile slammed into a Ukrainian apartment complex on Saturday, shocking the city that has served as a relatively safe haven for the war’s displaced, rescue workers digging through rubble spotted a sudden movement from above. On the eighth floor, they could see the arm of a bloodied elderly woman, so buried in debris she could barely move, waving a piece of red fabric. Below her, dozens of apartments had collapsed, swallowing residents into some 30 feet of rubble. From inside the damaged building, she was somehow alive — and calling for help. Russia’s blatant attack on civilians here — the worst to strike this city since Russia invaded Ukraine last February — came just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed his most senior military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, as the new overseer of his relentless war in Ukraine. The strike, which coincided with the Orthodox New Year, served as a grim message that Putin’s close confidant is likely to continue the violent missile strikes on civilian targets that have become a hallmark of Russia’s assault. The bombing, one of a wave of attacks Saturday across Ukraine, may have destroyed as many as 30 apartments in the sprawling complex, said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who shared a video of the destruction. Residents were trapped as flames engulfed part of the structure, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said on Telegram. At least 12 people died in the apartment building Saturday and dozens of others were wounded. At nightfall, about 20 people had been rescued, he said. Many more are believed to be buried in the ruins. . As the city neared its midnight curfew, dogs wearing specialized shoes to protect them from injuries were scaling the mound of debris, sniffing for survivors. Off to the side, the dead lay on the ground in white bags, red and white tape wrapped around them.
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US, Ukraine top military chiefs meet in person for 1st time
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Today
A MILITARY BASE IN SOUTHEASTERN POLAND (AP) — The top U.S. military officer, Army Gen. Mark Milley, traveled to a site near the Ukraine-Poland border on Tuesday and talked with his Ukrainian counterpart face to face for the first time — a meeting underscoring the growing ties between the two militaries and coming at a critical time as Russia's war with Ukraine nears the one-year mark.
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met for a couple of hours with Ukraine’s chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland. The two leaders have talked frequently about Ukraine's military needs and the state of the war over the past year but had never met.
The meeting comes as the international community ramps up the military assistance to Ukraine, including expanded training of Ukrainian troops by the U.S. and the provision of a Patriot missile battery, tanks and increased air defense and other weapons systems by the U.S. and a coalition of European and other nations.
It also marks a key time in the war. Ukraine's troops face fierce fighting in the eastern Donetsk province, where Russian forces — supplemented by thousands of private Wagner Group contractors — seek to turn the tide after a series of battlefield setbacks in recent months.
Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, told two reporters traveling with the chairman that the two generals felt it was important to meet in person. The reporters did not accompany Milley to the meeting and, under conditions set by the military, agreed to not identify the military base in southeastern Poland where they were located.
“These guys have been talking on a very regular basis for about a year now, and they’ve gotten to know each other,” Butler said. “They’ve talked in detail about the defense that Ukraine is trying to do against Russia’s aggression. And it’s important — when you have two military professionals looking each other in the eye and talking about very, very important topics, there’s a difference.”
Butler said there had been some hope that Zaluzhnyi would travel to Brussels for a meeting of NATO and other defense chiefs this week, but when it became clear on Monday that it would not happen, they quickly decided to meet in Poland, near the border.
While a number of U.S. civilian leader s have gone into Ukraine, the Biden administration has made it clear that no uniformed military service members will go into Ukraine other than those connected to the embassy in Kyiv. Butler said only a small group — Milley and six of his senior staffers — traveled by car to the meeting.
He said that the meeting will allow Milley to relay Zaluzhnyi's concerns and information to the other military leaders during the NATO chiefs' meeting. Milley, he said, will be able to “describe the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that, and the way he does that is one by understanding it himself but by also talking to Zaluzhnyi on a regular basis.”
Milley also will be able to describe the new training of Ukrainian forces that the U.S. is doing at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. The chairman, who got his first look at the new, so-called combined arms instruction during a nearly two-hour visit there on Monday, has said it will better prepare Ukrainian troops to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks.
More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the expanded training program at the camp just a day before Milley arrived.
Milley and Zaluzhnyi's meeting kicks off a series of high-level gatherings of military and defense leaders this week. Milley and other chiefs of defense will meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, and then the so-called Ukraine Contact Group will gather at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. That group consists of about 50 top defense officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and they work to coordinate military contributions to Ukraine.
The meetings are expected to focus on Ukraine's ongoing and future military needs as the hard-packed terrain of the winter months turns into muddy roads and fields in the spring.
After several months of losing territory it had captured, Russia in recent days claimed it took control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting, but if Moscow’s troops take control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.
And in a barrage of airstrikes over the weekend, Russia struck Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the death toll in one apartment building rose to 44.
Western analysts point to signs that the Kremlin is digging in for a drawn-out war, and say the Russian military command is preparing for an expanded mobilization effort.
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German caution on Ukraine arms rooted in political culture
By GEIR MOULSON
Today
BERLIN (AP) — Germany has become one of Ukraine's leading weapons suppliers in the 11 months since Russia's invasion, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz also has gained a reputation for hesitating to take each new step — generating impatience among allies.
Berlin’s perceived foot-dragging, most recently on the Leopard 2 battle tanks that Kyiv has long sought, is rooted at least partly in a post-World War II political culture of military caution, along with present-day worries about a possible escalation in the war.
On Friday, Germany inched closer to a decision to deliver the tanks, ordering a review of its Leopard stocks in preparation for a possible green light.
There was still no commitment, however. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius rejected the suggestion that Germany was standing in the way but said, “we have to balance all the pros and contras before we decide things like that, just like that.”
It's a pattern that has been repeated over the months as Scholz first held off pledging new, heavier equipment, then eventually agreed to do so.
That decision followed months of calls for Berlin to send the Marder and stoked pressure for it to move up another step to the Leopard tank.
“There is a discrepancy between the actual size of the commitment and weapons deliveries — it’s the second-largest European supplier — and the hesitancy with which it is done,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a Berlin-based senior analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.
Scholz, an unshakably self-confident politician with a stubborn streak and little taste for bowing to public calls for action, has stuck resolutely to his approach. He has said that Germany won’t go it alone on weapons decisions and pointed to the need to avoid NATO becoming a direct party to the war with Russia.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Scholz listed some of the equipment Germany has sent to Ukraine, declaring that it marks “a profound turning point in German foreign and security policy.”
That is, at least to some extent, true. Germany refused to provide lethal weapons before the invasion started, reflecting a political culture rooted in part in the memory of Germany's own history of aggression during the 20th century — including the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
“No German chancellor, of no party, wants to be seen out front in pushing a military agenda — you want to try all other options before you resort to that,” Kleine-Brockhoff said. “And therefore for domestic consumption, it is seen as a positive thing for a German chancellor not to lead on this, to be cautious, to be resistant, to have tried all other options.”
Scholz does face calls from Germany's center-right opposition and some in his three-party governing coalition to be more proactive on military aid; less so from his own center-left Social Democratic Party, which for decades was steeped in the legacy of Cold War rapprochement pursued by predecessor Willy Brandt in the early 1970s.
Scholz “decided early on that he does not want to lead militarily on Ukraine assistance,” Kleine-Brockhoff said, though “he wants to be a good ally and part of the alliance and in the middle of the pack.”
But the cautious approach “drives allies crazy” and raises questions over whether they can count on the Germans, Kleine-Brockhoff acknowledged.
“Consent is of secondary importance here. We will either obtain it quickly, or we will do the right thing ourselves,” Morawiecki said.
British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The Guardian and other newspapers this week that “to its credit, the German government’s position on military support for Ukraine has moved a very long way since the eve of the Russian invasion.”
But he argued that the tank issue has become “a litmus test of Germany’s courage to resist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s nuclear blackmail, overcome its own domestic cocktail of fears and doubts, and defend a free and sovereign Ukraine,” and that Scholz should lead a “European Leopard plan.”
Whether that will eventually happen remains to be seen. Scholz's government has insisted on close coordination with the United States, a possible reflection in part of the fact that Germany — unlike Britain and France — relies on the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
On Friday, Scholz's spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, denied reports that Germany had insisted it would only deliver Leopard tanks if the U.S. sends its own Abrams tanks. He rejected the notion that Berlin is trailing others and insisted it is taking the right approach.
“These are not easy decisions, and they need to be well-weighed," he said. "And this is about them being sustainable, that all can go along with them and stand behind them — and part of a leadership performance is keeping an alliance together.”
The U.S. has resisted providing M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, citing extensive and complex maintenance and logistical challenges with the high-tech vehicles. Washington believes it would be more productive to send German Leopards since many allies have them and Ukrainian troops would need less training than on the more difficult Abrams.
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US, Germany sending battle tanks to aid Ukraine war effort
By FRANK JORDANS and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
36 mins ago
BERLIN (AP) — Germany and the United States said Wednesday they will send battle tanks to Ukraine, the first stage of a coordinated effort by the West to provide dozens of the heavy weapons to help Kyiv break combat stalemates as Russia’s invasion enters its 12th month.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. will send 31 M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, reversing months of persistent arguments by Washington that the tanks were too difficult for Ukrainian troops to operate and maintain.
The U.S. decision follows Germany agreeing to send 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from its own stocks. Germany had said the Leopards would not be sent unless the U.S. put its Abrams on the table, not wanting to incur Russia’s wrath without the U.S. similarly committing its own tanks.
“This is the result of intensive consultations, once again, with our allies and international partners,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz told German lawmakers. “It was right, and it is important that we didn’t let ourselves be driven" into making the decision.
Biden said European allies have agreed to send enough tanks to equip two Ukrainian tank battalions, or a total of 62 tanks.
“With spring approaching, Ukrainian forces are working to defend the territory they hold and preparing for additional counter offenses,” Biden said. “To liberate their land, they need to be able to counter Russia’s evolving tactics and strategy on the battlefield in the very near term.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed satisfaction at the news. Several European countries have equipped their armies with Leopard 2 tanks, and Germany's announcement means they can give some of their stocks to Ukraine.
“German main battle tanks, further broadening of defense support and training missions, green light for partners to supply similar weapons. Just heard about these important and timely decisions in a call with Olaf Scholz,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter. “Sincerely grateful to the chancellor and all our friends in (Germany).”
Scholz spoke by phone Wednesday with Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, the German chancellery said in a statement. The exchange focused on the security situation in Ukraine and continued support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression.
All five leaders agreed to continue military support to Ukraine in close Euro-Atlantic coordination.
The long-awaited decision came after U.S. officials revealed Tuesday a preliminary agreement for the United States to send M1 Abrams tanks to help Ukraine's troops push back Russian forces that remain entrenched in the country's east almost a year after Russia invaded its neighbor. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not yet been made public.
It is not clear when or how the tanks would be delivered to Ukraine, or how soon they could have an impact on the battlefield. Military analysts have said Russian forces are thought to be preparing for a spring offensive.
The $400 million package announced Wednesday also includes eight M88 recovery vehicles — tank-like tracked vehicles that can tow the Abrams if it gets stuck.
Altogether, France, the U.K., the U.S., Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden will send hundreds of tanks and heavy armored vehicles to fortify Ukraine as it enters a new phase of the war and attempts to break through entrenched Russian lines.
While Ukraine's supporters previously have supplied tanks, they were Soviet models in the stockpiles of countries that once were in Moscow's sphere of influence but are now aligned with the West. Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials insisted their forces need more modern Western-designed tanks.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed Germany’s decision. "At a critical moment in Russia’s war, these can help Ukraine to defend itself, win and prevail as an independent nation,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.
Russia's ambassador to Germany, Sergey Nechayev, called Berlin’s decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine “extremely dangerous,” saying it “shifts the conflict to a new level of confrontation and contradicts the statements of German politicians about their reluctance to get involved in it.”
Scholz had insisted that any decision to provide Ukraine with the powerful tanks would need to be taken in conjunction with Germany's allies, chiefly the U.S. By getting Washington to commit some of its own tanks, Berlin hopes to share the risk of any backlash from Russia.
Ekkehard Brose, head of the German military’s Federal Academy for Security Policy, said tying the United States into the decision was crucial, to avoid Europe facing a nuclear-armed Russia alone.
But he also noted the deeper historic significance of the decision.
“German-made tanks will face off against Russian tanks in Ukraine once more,” he said, adding that this was “not an easy thought” for Germany, which takes its responsibility for the horrors of World War II seriously.
“And yet it is the right decision,” Brose said, arguing that it was up to Western democracies to help Ukraine stop Russia’s military campaign.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius cautioned that it would take about three months for the first tanks to be deployed in Ukraine. He described the Leopard 2 as “the best battle tank in the world.”
“This is an important game change, possibly also for this war, at least in the current phase,” he said.
The German government said it planned to swiftly begin training Ukrainian tank crews in Germany. The package being put together would also include logistics, ammunition and maintenance.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described German and U.S. intentions as a “a rather disastrous plan.”
“I am convinced that many specialists understand the absurdity of this idea,” Peskov said.
“Simply because of technological aspects, this is a rather disastrous plan. The main thing is, this is a completely obvious overestimation of the potential (the supply of tanks) would add to the armed forces of Ukraine. It is yet another fallacy, a rather profound one,” the Kremlin official said.
Peskov predicted “these tanks will burn down just like all the other ones. ... Except they cost a lot, and this will fall on the shoulders of European taxpayers.” he added.
Germany has already provided considerable amounts of military hardware to Ukraine, including powerful PzH 2000 howitzers, Iris-T air-defense systems and Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns that have proved highly effective against Russian drones. It also announced plans to supply a Patriot air-defense battery and Marder infantry fighting vehicles.
Ahead of Scholz's official announcement, members of his three-party coalition government welcomed the Cabinet's agreement to supply the domestically made tanks.
“The Leopard’s freed!” German lawmaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, a senior Green party lawmaker, said.
However, two smaller opposition parties criticized the move. The far-right Alternative for Germany, which has friendly ties to Russia, called the decision “irresponsible and dangerous.”
“Germany risks being drawn directly into the war as a result,” party co-leader Tino Chrupalla said.
Scholz sought to reassure people in his country who were concerned about the implications of sending tanks to Ukraine.
“Trust me, trust the government,” he said. “By acting in an internationally coordinated manner, we will ensure that this support is possible without the risks to our country growing in the wrong direction.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who had previously called into question Germany's commitment to helping Ukraine, thanked Scholz on Twitter for the “big step towards stopping Russia.”
Other European nations, such as Finland and Spain, indicated a willingness Wednesday to part with their own Leopard or similar battle tanks as part of a larger coalition.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, which had said it planned to send 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, welcomed Germany’s decision to further "strengthen Ukraine’s defensive firepower."
"Together, we are accelerating our efforts to ensure Ukraine wins this war and secures a lasting peace,” Sunak said on Twitter.
Still, it isn't clear whether Ukraine will receive the estimated 300 tanks that analysts say are required to keep Russia from advancing in Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces and to press a counteroffensive in the country's southeast.
___
Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee in Washington, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw and Jill Lawless in London contributed.
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Russia Freed Prisoners to Fight Its War. Here’s How Some Fared.
Tens of thousands of inmates have joined a mercenary group fighting with the Kremlin’s decimated forces in Ukraine. Some of them are returning to civilian life with military training and, in many cases, battlefield traumas.
Image
A poster showing a member of the Russian military near the headquarters of the Wagner private military company in St. Petersburg, Russia. Credit...Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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He was released from a Russian prison and thrown into battle in Ukraine with a promise of freedom, redemption and money. Now, Andrei Yastrebov, who was among tens of thousands of convict soldiers, is part of a return from the battlefield with potentially serious implications for Russian society.
Mr. Yastrebov, 22, who had been serving time for theft, returned home a changed man. “We all feel like he is in some sort of hypnosis, like he is a different person,” said a relative of his, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “He is without any emotions.”
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US to send Ukraine longer-range bombs in latest turnaround
By TARA COPP, MATTHEW LEE and LOLITA C. BALDOR
Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of agonizing, the U.S has agreed to send longer-range bombs to Ukraine as it prepares to launch a spring offensive to retake territory Russia captured last year, U.S. officials said Thursday, confirming that the new weapons will have roughly double the range of any other offensive weapon provided by America.
The U.S. will provide ground-launched small diameter bombs as part of a $2.17 billion aid package it is expected to announce Friday, several U.S. officials said. The package also for the first time includes equipment to connect all the different air defense systems Western allies have rushed to the battlefield and integrate them into Ukraine's own air defenses, to help it better defend against Russia's missile attacks.
For months, U.S. officials have hesitated to send longer-range systems to Ukraine out of concern that they would be used to target inside Russia, escalating the conflict and drawing the U.S. deeper in. The longer-range bombs are the latest advanced system, such as Abrams tanks and the Patriot missile defense system, that the U.S. has eventually agreed to provide Ukraine after initially saying no. U.S. officials, though, have continued to reject Ukraine’s requests for fighter jets.
Ukrainian leaders have urgently pressed for longer-range munitions, and on Thursday officials said the U.S. will send an undisclosed number of the ground-launched, small diameter bombs, which have a range of about 95 miles (150 kilometers). The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the aid package not yet made public.
To date, the longest-range missile provided by the U.S. is about 50 miles (80 kilometers). The funding in the aid package is for longer-term purchases, so it wasn't clear Thursday how long it will take to get the bomb to the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukraine's defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said Thursday the country is prepared to offer guarantees to its Western partners that their weapons won’t be used to strike inside Russian territory, adding that Kyiv needs weapons with a range of up to 300 kilometers ( about 185 miles) to expel the Russian forces.
“If we could strike at a distance of up to 300 kilometers, the Russian army wouldn’t be able to mount a defense and will have to withdraw,” Reznikov said at a meeting with EU officials. “Ukraine is ready to provide any guarantees that your weapons will not be involved in attacks on the Russian territory. We have enough targets in the occupied areas of Ukraine, and we’re prepared to coordinate on (these) targets with our partners."
The U.S. aid package includes $425 million in ammunition and support equipment that will be pulled from existing Pentagon stockpiles and $1.75 billion in new funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is used to purchase new weapons from industry.
The assistance initiative, which will pay for the longer-range bombs and the air defense system integration, also funds two HAWK air defense systems, anti-aircraft guns and ammunition, and counter-drone systems.
Since Russia's invasion last February, Western allies have pledged a myriad of air defense systems to Ukraine to bolster its own Soviet-made S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems, and the latest aid package aims to provide the capability to integrate them all, which could improve Ukraine's ability to protect itself against incoming Russian attacks.
The U.S. has pledged medium- to long-range National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and truck-launched short-range Avenger air defense systems; the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S. are sending Patriot missile defense systems; Germany is sending medium-range IRIS-T air defense systems; and Spain is sending Aspide anti-aircraft air defense systems.
The addition of longer-range bombs to the latest aid package was first reported by Reuters.
Ukraine is still seeking F-16 fighter jets, which U.S. President Joe Biden has opposed sending since the beginning of the war. Asked Monday if his administration was considering sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Biden responded, “No.”
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian defense minister was asked if Biden’s ’’no” to F-16s was the final word.
“All types of help first passed through the ‘no’ stage,” Reznikov said. “Which only means ‘no’ at today’s given moment. The second stage is, ‘Let’s talk and study technical possibilities.’ The third stage is, ‘Let’s get your personnel trained.’ And the fourth stage is the transfer (of equipment).”
—-
Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
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Dozens of soldiers freed in Russia-Ukraine prisoner swap
47 mins ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Dozens of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war have returned home following a prisoner swap, officials on both sides said Saturday.
Top Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak said in a Telegram post that 116 Ukrainians were freed.
He said the released POWs include troops who held out in Mariupol during Moscow’s monthslong siege that reduced the southern port city to ruins, as well as guerrilla fighters from the Kherson region and snipers captured during the ongoing fierce battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Russian defense officials, meanwhile, announced that 63 Russian troops had returned from Ukraine following the swap, including some “special category” prisoners whose release was secured following mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
A statement issued Saturday by the Russian Defense Ministry did not provide details about these “special category” captives.
At least three civilians have been killed in Ukraine over the past 24 hours as Russian forces struck nine regions in the country’s south, north and east, according to reports on Ukrainian TV by regional governors on Saturday morning.
Two people were killed and 14 others wounded in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region by Russian shelling and missile strikes, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update on Saturday morning.
The casualty toll included a man who was killed and seven others who were wounded Friday after Russian missiles slammed into Toretsk, a town in the Donetsk region. Kyrylenko said that 34 houses, two kindergartens, an outpatient clinic, a library, a cultural centre and other buildings were damaged in the strike.
Seven teenagers received shrapnel wounds after an anti-personnel mine exploded late on Friday in the northeastern city of Izium, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. He said they were all hospitalized but their lives were not in danger.
Elsewhere, regional Ukrainian officials reported overnight shelling by Russia of border settlements in the northern Sumy region, as well as the town of Marhanets, which neighbors the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv has long accused Moscow of using the plant, which Russian forces seized early in the war, as a base for launching attacks on Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river.
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Ukraine defense minister expects help from West on warplanes
By HANNA ARHIROVA
Yesterday
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's defense minister expressed confidence Sunday that Western allies would agree to the country's latest weapons request — warplanes to fight off Russian forces that invaded nearly a year ago.
Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told a news conference in Kyiv that Ukraine has already received everything from its “wish list to Santa,” except planes.
“There will be planes, too," Reznikov predicted. “The question is just what kind exactly.... Consider that this mission is already completed.”
So far, Ukraine has won support from Baltic nations and Poland in its quest to obtain Western fighter jets. But several Western leaders have expressed concern that providing warplanes could provoke the Kremlin and draw their countries deeper into the conflict, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and wreaked massive destruction.
Kyiv says such jets are essential to challenging Russia’s air superiority and ensuring success in a Russian offensive that Reznikov predicted could begin around the war's one-year anniversary, Feb. 24.
"Not all Western weapons will arrive by then, but we have the resources and reserves to help stabilize and sustain the offensive,” Reznikov told reporters.
Since the war began, Western leaders have balked at some of Ukraine's requests, such as for longer-range missiles and tanks, only to agree later. The warplanes are the latest example.
Ukraine has relocated its warplanes and concealed air defense assets, hampering Moscow’s efforts to gain full control of the skies. After suffering early losses, the Russian air force has avoided venturing deep into Ukraine’s airspace and mostly focused on close front line support.
German-made tanks are on the way to Ukraine. Reznikov said his forces would begin training on Leopard tanks in Europe on Monday, before their delivery to Ukraine. So far, Canada, Poland, Germany, Great Britain and the United States have announced they will supply tanks to Ukraine.
The Kremlin has said Western countries' supply of increasingly sophisticated and more weapons will only prolong the conflict, and it has characterized NATO as a direct participant. Reznikov, commenting on the supply of Western weapons and the state of the Ukrainian army, took the rhetoric further on Sunday, telling reporters: “I absolutely boldly claim that we have become a de facto NATO country. We only have a de jure part left.”
Ukraine has applied to join NATO, as have two of Russia's other neighbors, Finland and Sweden.
On the battlefield, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said four people were injured Sunday when a Russian S-300 missile fell near an apartment block in Kharkiv city, and another was hurt when a missile hit a university building. Video showed the building hit was the National Academy for Urban Economy, about 700 meters from the city's central square.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, one of four regions that Russia illegally annexed last year even though its forces do not fully control the area. Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said five civilians were wounded in rocket attacks during the night in the city of Druzhkivka and that the town of Avdiivka and its outskirts were also fired on.
In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, the epicenter of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said Sunday it had repelled Russian attacks. The founder of the mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a Telegram post that Kyiv's forces were not retreating and that “there are fierce battles for every street, every house, every stairwell.”
In the Black Sea port of Odesa, workers labored to connect temporary generators shipped in to restore electricity. The city and surrounding area were plunged into darkness over the weekend following a large-scale network failure.
Grid operator Ukrenergo said that the failure involved equipment “repeatedly repaired” after Russia’s savage strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, and that residents should brace themselves for lengthy blackouts.
As of Sunday afternoon, about 280,000 customers — 40% of the customers — remained without power, said prime minister Denis Shmyhal.
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Zelenskyy tells UK ‘freedom will win,’ pushes for warplanes
By JILL LAWLESS
11 mins ago
LONDON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed for fighter jets to ensure his country's victory over Russia in a dramatic speech before the U.K. Parliament, where he also thanked the British people for their support since “Day One” of Moscow's invasion.
The embattled leader's surprise visit to Britain in a bid for more advanced weapons comes as Ukraine braces for an expected Russian offensive and hatches its own plans to retake land held by Moscow's forces. Western support has been key to Kyiv's surprisingly stiff defense, and the two sides are engaged in grinding battles.
It was only Zelenskyy's second foreign trip since Russia invaded on Feb, 24, 2022, after a December visit to Washington. French President Emmanuel Macron's office said he would host Zelenskyy and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris later in the day, and expectations were growing that he might meet European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday.
Before that, Sunak and Zelenskyy are due to visit Ukrainian troops being trained on the Challenger 2 tanks that Britain is sending as part of the hundreds that Kyiv says it needs.
Hundreds of lawmakers and parliamentary staff packed the 900-year-old Westminster Hall, the oldest — and, on a cold winter day, unheated — part of Parliament for Zelenskyy’s speech.
Zelenskyy, wearing his trademark olive drab sweatshirt, urged allies to send his country jets, saying combat aircraft would be “wings for freedom.”
In a pointed and dramatic gesture, Zelenskyy presented the speaker of the House of Commons with a Ukrainian air force helmet, inscribed by a Ukrainian pilot: “We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it.”
The president is trying to soften allies' reluctance to send advanced fighter jets, both because they are complex to fly and for fear of escalating the war.
The U.K. has repeatedly said it’s not practical to provide the Ukrainian military with British warplanes. But in a shift, the government said Wednesday it was “actively looking” at whether Ukraine could be sent Western jets, and was “in discussion with our allies” about it.
Britain announced it would train Ukrainian pilots in Britain on “NATO-standard fighter jets” within weeks.
Sunak spokesman Max Blain said the government was exploring “what jets we may be able to give” over the coming years, but had not made a decision on whether to send its F-35 or Typhoons.
“We think it is right to provide both short-term equipment … that can help win the war now, but also look to the medium to long term to make sure Ukraine has every possible capacity it requires,” he said.
Ukraine has sought fighter jets from its allies since early in the war to bolster its force of Soviet-made MiG-29 and Su fighters. The success of its air force in continuing to defend its skies and territory fly despite Russia’s much bigger numbers helped push back Moscow’s initial assault.
Macron has said France hasn't ruled out sending fighter jets but set conditions before such a step is taken, including not leading to an escalation of tensions or using the aircraft “to touch Russian soil,” and not resulting in weakening “the capacities of the French army.”
Zelenskyy also went to Buckingham Palace, where he met with King Charles III, who greeted him with a broad smile and a warm handshake before they held a meeting over tea. The king told the president that “we’ve all been worried about you and thinking about your country for so long.”
In his Parliament speech, Zelenskyy noted that Charles was a qualified military pilot.
“The king is an air force pilot,” Zekenskyy said, and “in Ukraine today, every air force pilot is a king.”
Zelenskyy was greeted with applause, cheers and cries of “Slava Ukraini” — “Glory to Ukraine” — as he arrived in Parliament, where his cause has wide support from both the Conservative government and opposition parties.
He had addressed the U.K. Parliament remotel y in March, two weeks after the start of the invasion. He echoed World War II leader Winston Churchill’s famous “never surrender” speech, vowing that Ukrainians “will fight till the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.”
On Wednesday, he recalled how on a prewar visit to London, he sat on Churchill's chair in his subterranean wartime headquarters, and had a feeling that he only now understood.
“It was the feeling of how bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory," Zelenskyy said.
In past wars, “evil lost,” Zekenskyy told U.K. lawmakers. “We know Russia will lose and we we know victory will change the world.″
The U.K. has sent Ukraine more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) in weapons and equipment, and Zelenskyy thanked Sunak and his predecessor Boris Johnson for their staunch backing. Sunak took office in October and has pledged to maintain the U.K.’s support.
“Boris, you got others united when it seemed absolutely impossible,” Zelenskyy said.
He also urged stronger sanctions against Moscow until “Russia is deprived of any possibility to finance this war.”
Zelenskyy thanked Britons for their bravery, adding: “London has stood with Kyiv since Day One.”
The Ukrainian leader arrived on a Royal Air Force plane in London, and Sunak greeted him on the tarmac, tweeting a photo of them embracing. They held talks at the prime minister's 10 Downing St. residence before Zelenskyy's speech.
Sunak and Zelenskyy also are due to visit Ukrainian troops being trained on the Challenger 2 tanks that Britain is sending as part of the hundreds that Kyiv says it needs. More than 10,000 Ukrainian troops have also been trained at bases in the U.K., and Britain says it will train 20,000 more in 2023.
“I am proud that today we will expand that training from soldiers to marines and fighter jet pilots, ensuring Ukraine has a military able to defend its interests well into the future," Sunak said.
Coinciding with the visit, the U.K. government announced a new round of sanctions against six entities that Britain said supplied equipment to the Russian military. CST, a manufacturer of Russian drones and parts for helicopters used against Ukraine, were among those sanctioned.
There were rising expectations that Zelenskyy might visit Brussels, where leaders from the 27-nation bloc are holding a summit Thursday. The EU's legislature has also slated a special plenary session that day.
The London visit came as Russian forces shelled areas of eastern Ukraine in what Kyiv authorities believe is part of a thrust by the Kremlin’s forces before the invasion anniversary. Moscow, meanwhile, believes Ukraine is preparing its own battlefield push.
___
Danica Kirka and Sylvia Hui in London and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed.
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Zelenskyy, in Brussels, urges EU to grant Ukraine membership
By RAF CASERT and SAMUEL PETREQUIN
2 hours ago
BRUSSELS (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that “a Ukraine that is winning” should become a European Union member, arguing the bloc wouldn't be whole without his country being an integral part of the EU.
Zelenskky made his comments during an address to the European Parliament on a rare trip outside Ukraine, which has been trying to repel a full-scale invasion by Russia for nearly a year.
The Brussels visit came as Russia intensified its attacks in eastern Ukraine amid signs that a major new offensive by Moscow was underway before the Feb. 24 anniversary of the war.
Zelenskky, who also visited the U.K. and France on a whirlwind European tour that started on Wednesday, will already head home with heaps of goodwill and commitments of more military aid.
He arrived to the European Parliament to rapturous applause, cheering and hoots from legislators, insisting in his plenary speech that Ukraine's fight against Russia was one fought for the freedom of Europe as a whole.
“A Ukraine that is winning is going to be member of the European Union,” Zelenskyy said to applause, building his address around the common destiny that Ukraine and the 27-nation bloc face in confronting Russia head-on.
“Europe will always be, and remain Europe as long as we ... take care of the European way of life,” he said.
Zelenskyy added that Russia wants to destroy the European way of life, but “we will not allow that.”
He held up an EU flag after his address and the entire legislature stood in somber silence as the Ukrainian national anthem and the European anthem “Ode to Joy” were played one after the other.
Zelenskyy then headed to the urn-shaped Europa building, where the 27 EU leaders were meeting in a summit, to push those same points.
Before Zelenskyy spoke, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said allies should consider “quickly, as a next step, providing long-range systems” and fighter jets to Ukraine. Metsola said the response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine “must be proportional to the threat, and the threat is existential.”
Metsola also told him that “we have your back. We were with you then, we are with you now, we will be with you for as long as it takes.”
EU leaders were hoping to impress on Zelenskyy that the powerful bloc is steadfast in its support for Ukraine as Russia is feared to be making moves for a new offensive.
The latest draft of the summit conclusions seen by The Associated Press says “the European Union will stand by Ukraine with steadfast support for as long as it takes." Military analysts say Putin is hoping that Europe's support for Ukraine will wane.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the bloc will send Zelenskyy "this signal of unity and solidarity, and can show that we will continue our support for Ukraine in defending its independence and integrity for as long as this is necessary.”
Zelenskyy’s high-profile pursuit of more Western military aid came as evidence mounted that Russia’s anticipated offensive around the anniversary of the invasion is starting to take shape.
The Kremlin’s forces “have regained the initiative in Ukraine and have begun their next major offensive” in the eastern Luhansk region, most of which is occupied by Russia, the Institute for the Study of War, said in its latest assessment.
“Russian forces are gradually beginning an offensive, but its success is not inherent or predetermined,” the U.S.-based think tank said.
Zelenskyy used the dais of the European Parliament hoping to match Wednesday's speech to Britain's legislature when he thanked the nation for its unrelenting support.
That same support has come from the EU. The bloc and its member states have already backed Kyiv with about 50 billion euros ($53.6 billion) in aid, provided military hardware and imposed nine packages of sanctions on the Kremlin.
The EU is in the midst of brokering a new sanctions package worth about 10 billion euros ($10.7 billion) before the war's anniversary. And there is still plenty of scope for exporting more military hardware to Ukraine as a Russian spring offensive is expected.
Russia is also watching Zelenskyy's movements closely. On Wednesday, Russian state television showed the flight path of a British air force plane that Zelenskyy used to travel to London taken from a flight monitoring site. The anchor noted that the plane flew from the Polish air base in Rzeszow that serves as a hub for Western arms deliveries to Ukraine.
A high-profile visit to EU headquarters where the summit was being held should add to the goodwill to help his country on to the road of accession talks. Ukraine is talking about joining the EU in a matter of years, while practice has shown it can take decades before aspiring members are considered fit to join.
Beyond EU top officials like the summit host, European Council President Charles Michel, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Zelenskyy should find time for bilateral meetings with leaders to press for more hardware, ranging from ammunition to warplanes — something the bloc as a whole doesn't possess but individual countries do.
Meanwhile, fighting intensified in Ukraine on Thursday.
In the eastern Donetsk region the front line expanded significantly over the previous day, with fierce battles taking place as Moscow’s forces closed in on key Ukrainian-held towns, according to regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. Russian shelling struck a kindergarten, hospital, cultural center, factory and apartment buildings, he said.
“The intensity of the shelling has increased dramatically and we are seeing a significant intensification of activity by the Russian army immediately in the south, center and north of the region,” Kyrylenko said. “Russia is again actively using combat aircraft to shell our cities and villages.”
Russian forces also stepped up their attacks in neighboring Luhansk province, launching “a broad offensive,” regional Governor Serhii Haidai said.
In the northeastern Kharkiv province, 23 cities and villages came under shelling. In the border city of Vovchansk, shelling damaged around 10 apartment buildings.
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Hilltop coal-mining town a tactical prize in Ukraine war
By SAMYA KULLAB
Today
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a small coal-mining town on Ukraine’s eastern front line, a fight for strategic superiority is being waged in a battlefield steeped with symbolism as the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion nears.
The town of Vuhledar — meaning “gift of coal” — has emerged as a critical hot spot in the fight for Donetsk province that would give both sides, the Ukrainian forces who hold the urban center, and the Russians positioned in the suburbs, a tactical upper hand in the greater battle for the Donbas region.
Located on an elevated plane that is one of the few high-terrain spots in the area, its capture would be an important step for Russia to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines. Securing Vuhledar would give Ukraine a potential launching pad for future counter-offensives south.
Then there is the symbolic weight: Vuhledar is close to the administrative border of Donetsk province, and winning it would play into Russia’s greater aim of controlling the region as a whole.
“The center of gravity of the Russian military effort is in Donetsk, and Vuhledar is basically the southern flank of that,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relation’s Berlin office.
The grinding fight to win the area has cost Russia manpower and weapons, as Ukrainians continue to hold up defensive lines. Russia sends battalion-sized scout groups to probe Ukrainian lines and shoot artillery toward their positions with an eye to pushing north toward the critical N15 highway, a key supply route.
In remarks this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian troops were advancing “with success” in Vuhledar. Meanwhile, a British defense intelligence briefing said Russia's aim was to capture unoccupied areas of Ukrainian-held Donetsk but it was unlikely to build up the forces required to change the outcome of the war.
Vuhledar’s pre-war population of 14,000 has dwindled to about 300. The majority of the town’s residents worked in the coal mine and nearby factories before the war.
Olha Kyseliova, who was recently evacuated, worked in a brick factory before the fighting upended her life.
Russian forces ramped up attacks beginning on Jan. 24, residents said. That day, a missile tore through Kyseliova's nine-story building. She was sheltering in the basement with her three children and emerged to find a gaping hole through the roof of her third-floor apartment.
That was the moment she decided she had to leave her hometown. “I cried the entire way out, I didn’t want to leave,” she said.
Three Ukrainian brigades are positioned in Vuhledar and on the outskirts of the town. The Associated Press spoke to five commanders in units from all three, who provided only their first names in keeping with Ukraine's military policy. Russia’s 155 Marine infantry troops are positioned just four kilometers (two miles) away in Vuhledar’s suburbs.
For both sides, the town is tactically important.
“It’s one of the main logistics points of the Donbas region, and also one of the main points of elevation,” said Maksym, the deputy commander of a Ukrainian marine infantry battalion. “By capturing Vuhledar, Russians can easily occupy the entire Donetsk region.”
Seizing Vuhledar would enable Russia to push forward and threaten Ukrainian supply lines feeding into the fierce Marinka front line to the north, said Gressel of the European Council on Foreign Relations. For Ukraine, Vuhledar would be a launching pad for future counter-offensives toward Mariupol and Berdiansk.
From their perch in the town, Ukrainian forces can see into Russian lines and have so far been able to repel Russian attempts to encircle Vuhledar. Columns of Russian tanks and armored vehicles transporting infantrymen continuously assault and attempt to break Ukrainian defenses. Aviation, rockets and artillery target the town.
“But with our fighters and anti-tank equipment their attempts have not been successful,” said Maksym, the Ukrainian deputy commander. “The situation is strained, but controlled.”
Similar to other front lines along the east, the Russians are losing scores of infantrymen in an attempt to tire and weaken Ukrainian defensive lines. Serhii, the commander of a Ukrainian intelligence unit, said he saw Russian soldiers sent straight through fields mined by the Ukrainians following Russia’s capture of the village of Pavlivka, south of Vuhledar, in November.
“They de-mine our fields by using their own people,” he said.
Ukrainian commanders said some of their units are suffering from dire ammunition shortages.
That view was not shared across brigades, suggesting some are better supplied than others. Taras, the commander of a mortar unit, said his forces were suffering very serious shortages. Faced with orders to target an enemy position, he said, “I have just two or three rounds of ammunition to do it. It’s nothing.”
Two commanders of a brigade inside Vuhledar reported the Russians hurled gas-laden projectiles that caused severe disorientation for hours, and burning of the throat and skin. Higher-ranking commanders did not comment on the type of gas used and said an investigation was ongoing.
“They are probing and testing us across the eastern front line, including in Vuhledar,” said Oleksandr, a commander who was recently rotated out of the town. “They are trying to find our points of weakness.”
For now, Russia’s activities around Vuhledar are not “operationally significant,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War. More combat power is required to execute breakthroughs that would achieve the stated aim of the Russian invasion — the capture of the entire Donetsk province.
Even in the event of victory in Vuhledar, Russia would still need a lot of combat power to push north. Three months after capturing the village of Pavlivka in November, Russian forces have yet to make breakthroughs in Vuhledar, which is only four kilometers — a six-minute drive — away.
“It’s not operationally significant because Russians will still have to fight for more territory to make a meaningful disruption of Ukrainian ground lines of communication to western Donetsk,” Stepanenko said. Vuhledar is just "one settlement on their way, where they are already suffering significant losses and where they already seem to have suffered losses in the area before.”
Meanwhile, the last of Vuhledar’s residents said they are staying put.
Oleksandra Havrylko, police press officer for the Donetsk region, pleads with those who remain to leave the devastated area. Most spend their days hiding in basements, coming out when there are lulls in fighting to charge phones and gather supplies in the town’s points of refuge, called “invincibility centers”.
All but one of the town's children have been evacuated. The father of a 15-year-old, the last remaining minor in the town, refuses to part with his son or leave the area, she said.
“There are people in the city who don’t want to be evacuated, we tried many times,” she said. Most have never ventured far from their hometown.
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Comments
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — One was asked to be an informant for Russia. Another's 16-year-old son was abducted as leverage. A third is still in Russian custody. Here are just a few portraits of prominent Ukrainian politicians, journalists, pastors and more who ended up on Russian lists for abduction, in an effort to strip Ukraine of its leaders.
___
VIKTOR MARUNIAK
Two carloads of Russians came for Viktor Maruniak on his 60th birthday.
It was March 21. Maruniak, the head of Stara Zburivka village, in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, said he and three other local men were taken to a nearby hotel, blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten, strangled and forced to strip naked in below zero weather.
“They’d point a gun toward our heads or toward the head of someone else, saying if you don’t say something, we will kill them,” Maruniak said. “Something was turned off in my head. It helped me survive. I was out of my body.”
After several days, he said, he was taken to a second detention center and tortured with electric shocks. They asked where weapons were stored. He said his captors’ vehicles and uniforms, along with documents he spotted and conversations he overheard, indicated that he had been taken by a special paramilitary police force under Russia’s National Guard.
To his surprise, he was released three weeks later, on the condition that he return to his village as an informant.
Instead, he fled to Latvia. He said he had nine broken ribs. Photographs taken after his ordeal show him thin and withered, with injuries to his hands, back, buttocks and leg. He looks with a level gaze at the camera, a man beyond shock or sorrow, as if nothing human beings might do to each other would surprise him anymore.
“They kept kidnapping people in my village,” he said. “Nobody knows where they are kept and why they are kidnapped.”
continues.....
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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also, why did boebert and gaetz neither applaud or stand at any point during the address? hmmmmm.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has a peculiar “cemetery,” one that recalls some of the worst damage done since the Russian invasion: the debris of rockets used against this town and its people.
The graveyard has more than a thousand missiles, or parts of them. Local authorities hope they can help provide information for any prosecution case against Russians authorities and soldiers. And one day, maybe, they will become part of a museum of the atrocities in the country.
The blueish cylinders are lined up in rows according to their size, making an impressive if shocking sight from the air.
Dmytro Chubenko, spokesman for the Kharkiv region’s Prosecutor Office, said that the rockets have been collected since the first attacks, and after some time officials decided to organize them by type.
“These are pieces of evidence that an international criminal court would use,” he said during a visit to the place. He mentioned that some specialists have already come to the city to analyze the material.
The missiles, he added, were used against some important residential areas, like North Saltivka and Oleksiivka. He said that the authorities estimate that at least 1,700 people have been killed by shelling, including 44 children, in Kharkiv and its surroundings.
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In summer, the buildings in areas like Saltivka were severely damaged, some blackened and others crumbling. There were practically no activities, with shops closed and apartments destroyed. The winter has not improved anything.
“We have lost everything, and it is not clear at all what we can expect in the future,” said Anna, a North Saltivka resident who left months ago and who didn't give her last name for security reasons.
Ihor Deshpetko, 44, still lives in Kharkiv, despite what he has to suffer.
"There is no heating in my house, (and) unfortunately there won't be until the end of the winter,” he said, adding that he now tends to call the area he lives the “black neighborhood.”
Back in the missiles “cemetery,” Chubenko, from the prosecutors' office, said that they will keep the rockets as long as needed so any expert or prosecutor can take the information they need to use as evidence against Russians.
And after that?
“I don’t know what will happen next," he said. “Maybe we will make a museum.”
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As far as the sweatsuit. I don't think it showed a lack of decorum or anything, but it did seem a little bit like a scene made for an epic film that was intended to help influence things from a PR angle, especially with the unfurling of the Ukrainian flag. I can't blame them for trying whatever they have to do to garner support though.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
The Russian people probably don't love it though.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
BOBRYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainians usually celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, as do the Russians. But not this year, or at least not all of them.
Some Orthodox Ukrainians have decided to observe Christmas on Dec. 25, like many Christians around the world. Yes, this has to do with the war, and yes, they have the blessing of their local church.
The idea of commemorating the birth of Jesus in December was considered radical in Ukraine until recently, but Russia's invasion changed many hearts and minds.
In October, the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is not aligned with the Russian church and one of two branches of Orthodox Christianity in the country, agreed to allow faithful to celebrate on Dec. 25.
The choice of dates has clear political and religious overtones in a nation with rival Orthodox churches and where slight revisions to rituals can carry potent meaning in a culture war that runs parallel to the shooting war.
For some people, changing dates represents a separation from Russia, its culture, and religion. People in a village on the outskirts of Kyiv voted recently to move up their Christmas observance.
“What began on Feb. 24, the full-scale invasion, is an awakening and an understanding that we can no longer be part of the Russian world,” Olena Paliy, a 33-year-old Bobrytsia resident, said.
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The Russian Orthodox Church, which claims sovereignty over Orthodoxy in Ukraine, and some other Eastern Orthodox churches continue to use the ancient Julian calendar. Christmas falls 13 days later on that calendar, or Jan. 7, than it does on the Gregorian calendar used by most church and secular groups.
The Catholic Church first adopted the modern, more astronomically precise Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, and Protestants and some Orthodox churches have since aligned their own calendars for purposes of calculating Christmas.
The Synod of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine decreed in October that local church rectors could choose the date along with their communities, saying the decision followed years of discussion but also resulted from the circumstances of the war.
In Bobrytsia, some members of the faith promoted the change within the local church, which recently transitioned to being part of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with no ties to Russia. When a vote was taken last week, 200 out of 204 people said yes to adopting Dec. 25 as the new day to celebrate Christmas.
“This is a big step because never in our history have we had the same dates of celebration of Christmas in Ukraine with the whole Christian world. All the time we were separated,” said Roman Ivanenko, a local official in Bobrytsia, and one of the promoters of the change. With the switch, he said, they are “breaking this connection” with the Russians.
As in all the Kyiv region, Sunday morning in Bobrytsia began with the sound of sirens, but that didn’t prevent people from gathering in the church to attend a Christmas Mass on Dec. 25 for the first time. In the end, there were no attacks reported in the capital.
“No enemy can take away the holiday because the holiday is born in the soul,” the Rev. Rostyslav Korchak said in his homily, during which he used the words “war,” “soldiers,” and “evil” more than “Jesus Christ.”
Anna Nezenko, 65, attended the church in Bobrytsia on every Christmas since the building was inaugurated in 2000, although always on Jan. 7th. She said she did not feel strange doing so Sunday.
“The most important is the God to be born in the heart,” she said.
In 2019, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, granted complete independence, or autocephaly, to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Ukrainians who favored recognition for a national church in tandem with Ukraine’s political independence from the former Soviet Union had long sought such approval.
The Russian Orthodox Church and its leader, Patriarch Kirill, fiercely protested the move, saying Ukraine was not under the jurisdiction of Bartholomew.
The other major branch of Orthodoxy in the country, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, remained loyal to Moscow until the outbreak of war. It declared independence in May, though it remains under government scrutiny. That church has traditionally celebrated Christmas on Jan. 7.
____
Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. The Associated Press religion correspondent, Peter Smith, contributed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s foreign minister said Monday that his nation wants a summit to end the war but he doesn’t anticipate Russia taking part, a statement making it hard to foresee the devastating invasion ending soon.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press that his government wants a “peace” summit within two months at the United Nations with Secretary-General António Guterres as mediator.
Kuleba said that Russia must face a war-crimes tribunal before his country directly talks with Moscow. He said, however, that other nations should feel free to engage with Russians, as happened before a grain agreement between Turkey and Russia.
The AP interview offered a glimpse at Ukraine's vision of how the war with Russia could one day end, although any peace talks would be months away and highly contingent on complex international negotiations.
Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government had made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.
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Kuleba said during the interview at the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023.
“Every war ends in a diplomatic way," he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week that no Ukrainian peace plan can succeed without taking into account “the realities of today that can’t be ignored” — a reference to Moscow’s demand that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed in 2014, as well as other territorial gains.
Kuleba said the Ukrainian government would like to have the “peace” summit by the end of February.
“The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country," he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”
At the Group of 20 summit in Bali in November, Zelenskyy made the long-distance presentation of a 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Asked about whether they would invite Russia to the summit, he said that Moscow would first need to face prosecution for war crimes at an international court.
“They can only be invited to this step in this way," Kuleba said.
About U.N. Secretary-General's role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”
The U.N. spokesman’s office had no immediate comment.
Other world leaders have also offered to mediate, such as those in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
The foreign minister again downplayed comments by Russian authorities that they are ready for talks.
"They (Russians) regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed few days ago that his country is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine, but suggested that the Ukrainians are the ones refusing to take that step. Despite Putin's comments, Moscow's forces have kept attacking Ukraine — a sign that peace isn't imminent.
Zelenskyy's visit to the U.S. was his first foreign trip since the war started on Feb. 24. Kuleba praised Washington's efforts and underlined the significance of the visit.
"This shows how both the United States are important for Ukraine, but also how Ukraine is important for the United States,” said Kuleba, who was part of the delegation to the U.S.
Ukraine secured a new $1.8 billion military aid package, including a Patriot missile battery, during the trip.
Kuleba said that the move “opens the door for other countries to do the same.”
He said that the U.S. government developed a program for the missile battery to complete the training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield.”
While Kuleba didn't mention a specific time frame, he said only that it will be "very much less than six months." And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine.
During Russia’s ground and air war in Ukraine, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying Ukraine's message and needs to an international audience, whether through Twitter posts or meetings with friendly foreign officials.
On Monday, Ukraine called on U.N. member states to deprive Russia of its status as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and to exclude it from the world body. Kuleba said they have long “prepared for this step to uncover the fraud and deprive Russia of its status.”
The Foreign Ministry says that Russia never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and taking the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“This is the beginning of an uphill battle, but we will fight, because nothing is impossible,” he told the AP.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian military’s top brass came under increasing scrutiny Wednesday as more details emerged of how at least 89 Russian soldiers, and possibly many more, were killed in a Ukrainian artillery attack on a single building.
The scene last weekend in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka, where the soldiers were temporarily stationed, appears to have been a recipe for disaster. Hundreds of Russian troops were reportedly clustered in a building close to the front line, well within range of Ukraine’s Western-supplied precision artillery, possibly sitting close to an ammunition store and perhaps unwittingly helping Kyiv’s forces to zero in on them.
It was one of the deadliest single attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and the highest death toll in a single incident acknowledged so far by either side in the conflict.
Ukraine’s armed forces claimed the Makiivka strike killed around 400 Russian soldiers housed in a vocational school building. About 300 more of them were wounded, officials alleged. It wasn't possible to verify either side's claims due to the fighting.
The Russian military sought to blame the soldiers for their own deaths. Gen. Lt. Sergei Sevryukov said in a statement late Tuesday that their phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike.
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Emily Ferris, a research fellow on Russia and Eurasia at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told The Associated Press it is “very hard to verify” whether cellphone signaling and geolocation were to blame for the accurate strike.
She noted that Russian soldiers on active duty are forbidden from using their phones — exactly because there have been so many instances in recent years of their being used for targeting, including by both sides in the Ukraine war. The conflict has made ample use of modern technology.
She also noted that blaming the soldiers themselves was a “helpful narrative” for Moscow as it helps deflect criticism and steer attention toward the official cellphone ban.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to move the conversation along, too, as he took part via video link in a sending-off ceremony Wednesday for a frigate equipped with the Russian navy’s new hypersonic missiles.
Putin said the Zircon missiles that the Admiral Gorshkov frigate was carrying were a “unique weapon,” capable of flying at nine times the speed of sound and with a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). Russia says the missiles can't be intercepted.
Meanwhile, away from the battlefields, France said Wednesday it will send French-made AMX-10 RC light tanks to Ukraine — the first tanks from a Western European country — following an afternoon phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
The French presidency didn't say how many tanks would be delivered and when. The NATO member has given Ukraine anti-tank and air defense missiles and rocket launchers.
Later Wednesday, President Joe Biden confirmed that the U.S. is considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine. The Bradley is a medium armored combat vehicle that can carry about 10 personnel, or be configured to carry additional ammunition or communications equipment.
The Pentagon has already provided Ukraine with more than 2,000 combat vehicles, including 477 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles and more than 1,200 Humvees.
The weekend Makiivka strike seemed to be the latest blow to the Kremlin’s military prestige as it struggles to advance the invasion of its neighbor.
But Ferris, the analyst, said “there should be a bit of caution around leaning too heavily on this (attack) as a sign of (the) Russian army’s weakness.”
As details of the strike have trickled out in recent days, some observers detected military sloppiness at the root of so many deaths.
U.K. intelligence officials said Wednesday that Moscow’s “unprofessional” military practices were likely partly to blame for the high casualties.
“Given the extent of the damage, there is a realistic possibility that ammunition was being stored near to troop accommodation, which detonated during the strike, creating secondary explosions,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said on Twitter.
In the same post, the ministry said the building struck by Ukrainian missiles was little more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the front line, within “one of the most contested areas of the conflict,” in the partially Russian-occupied Donetsk region.
“The Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage from well before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate,” the update added.
The Russian Defense Ministry, in a rare admission of losses, initially said the strike killed 63 troops. But as emergency crews searched the ruins, the death toll mounted. The regiment’s deputy commander was among the dead.
That stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the broader military campaign is being handled by the Ministry of Defense.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known military blogger, accused Russian generals of “demonstrating their own stupidity and misunderstanding of what’s going on (among) the troops, where everyone has cellphones.”
“Moreover, in places where there’s coverage, artillery fire is often adjusted by phone. There are simply no other ways,” Tatarsky wrote in a Telegram post.
Others blamed the decision to station hundreds of troops in one place. “The cellphone story is not too convincing,” military blogger Semyon Pegov wrote. “The only remedy is not to house personnel en masse in large buildings. Simply not to house 500 people in one place but spread them across 10 different locations.”
Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilized reservists from the region of Samara, in southwestern Russia.
The Institute for the Study of War saw in the incident further evidence that Moscow isn’t properly utilizing the reservists it began calling up last September.
“Systemic failures in Russia’s force generation apparatus continue to plague personnel capabilities to the detriment of Russian operational capacity in Ukraine,” the think tank said in a report late Tuesday.
Ferris, of the Royal United Services Institute, said the Makiivka strike shows the Russian army is more interested in growing its number of troops, not in training them in wartime skills.
“That’s really how Russia conducts a lot of its warfare — by overwhelming the enemy with volume, with people,” she said. "The Kremlin view, unfortunately, is that soldiers’ lives are expendable.”
In a grinding battle of attrition, Russian forces have pressed their offensive on Bakhmut in Donetsk despite heavy losses. The Wagner Group, a private military contractor owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman with close ties to Putin, has spearheaded the Bakhmut offensive.
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that convicts Wagner pulled from prisons accounted for 90% of Russian casualties in fighting for Bakhmut, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the finding.
The White House said last month that intelligence findings showed Wagner had some 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 40,000 recruited convicts. The U.S. assesses that Wagner is spending about $100 million a month in the fight.
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Kozlowska reported from London. Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered Moscow’s armed forces to observe a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war.
Putin did not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on a Ukrainian agreement to follow suit, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually halt on the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line. Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed Russian peace moves as playing for time to regroup their forces and prepare for additional attacks.
At various points during the war that started on Feb. 24, Putin has ordered limited and local truces to allow evacuations of civilians or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday's order was the first time Putin directed his troops to observe a cease-fire throughout Ukraine.
“Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ,” according to Putin’s order, addressed to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and published on the Kremlin’s website.
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Putin acted at the suggestion of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who proposed a truce from noon Friday through midnight Saturday, local time. The Russian Orthodox Church, which uses the ancient Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7 — later than the Gregorian calendar — although some Christians in Ukraine also mark the holiday on that date.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed Kirill's call as “a cynical trap and an element of propaganda.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had proposed a Russian troop withdrawal earlier, before Dec. 25, but Russia rejected it.
Kirill has previously justified the war as part of Russia's “metaphysical struggle” to prevent a liberal ideological encroachment from the West.
Adding to the possibility of a cease-fire were diplomatic efforts. Putin spoke by phone with Turkey’s president on Thursday and the Kremlin said Putin “reaffirmed Russia’s openness to a serious dialogue” with Ukrainian authorities.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Putin to implement a “unilateral cease-fire,” according to a statement from the Turkish president’s office.
Erdogan also told Zelenskyy later by telephone that Turkey was ready to mediate a “lasting peace.” Erdogan has made such an offer frequently. It has already helped broker a deal allowing Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain, and it has facilitated a prisoner swap.
Russia's professed readiness came with the usual preconditions: that “Kyiv authorities fulfill the well-known and repeatedly stated demands and recognize new territorial realities,” the Kremlin said, referring to Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia and acknowledge other illegal territorial gains.
Previous attempts at peace talks have fallen at that hurdle, as Ukraine demands that Russia withdraws from occupied areas at the very least.
Elsewhere, the head of NATO said he detected no change in Moscow’s stance on Ukraine, insisting that the Kremlin “wants a Europe where they can control a neighboring country.”
“We have no indications that President Putin has changed his plans, his goals for Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Oslo.
Ukraine's Western allies have renewed a vow to keep supporting Kyiv for as long as it takes to defeat Russia.
In the latest pledge of military help, the French Defense Ministry said it plans talks soon with its Ukrainian counterpart on delivering armored combat vehicles. France’s presidency says it will be the first time this type of Western-made wheeled tank destroyer is sent to Ukraine's military.
Also, U.S. President Joe Biden said Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a medium armored combat vehicle that can serve as a troop carrier, could be sent to Ukraine.
The fighting in Ukraine has increasingly become a war of attrition in recent weeks, as winter sets in.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said Thursday at least five civilians were killed and eight wounded across the country by Russian shelling in the previous 24 hours.
The ongoing intense battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut has left 60% of the city in ruins, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Thursday. Ukrainian defenders were holding the Russians back, but the Kremlin's forces have pummeled the city with months of relentless shelling.
Taking the city in the Donbas region, an expansive industrial area bordering Russia, would not only give Putin a major battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it also would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open the way for Moscow's forces to press on toward key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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By Siobhán O'Grady and Anastacia Galouchka
January 14, 2023 at 18:38 ET
DNIPRO, Ukraine — Two hours after a Russian missile slammed into a Ukrainian apartment complex on Saturday, shocking the city that has served as a relatively safe haven for the war’s displaced, rescue workers digging through rubble spotted a sudden movement from above.
On the eighth floor, they could see the arm of a bloodied elderly woman, so buried in debris she could barely move, waving a piece of red fabric. Below her, dozens of apartments had collapsed, swallowing residents into some 30 feet of rubble.
From inside the damaged building, she was somehow alive — and calling for help.
Russia’s blatant attack on civilians here — the worst to strike this city since Russia invaded Ukraine last February — came just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed his most senior military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, as the new overseer of his relentless war in Ukraine.
The strike, which coincided with the Orthodox New Year, served as a grim message that Putin’s close confidant is likely to continue the violent missile strikes on civilian targets that have become a hallmark of Russia’s assault. The bombing, one of a wave of attacks Saturday across Ukraine, may have destroyed as many as 30 apartments in the sprawling complex, said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who shared a video of the destruction.
Residents were trapped as flames engulfed part of the structure, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said on Telegram.
At least 12 people died in the apartment building Saturday and dozens of others were wounded. At nightfall, about 20 people had been rescued, he said. Many more are believed to be buried in the ruins. . As the city neared its midnight curfew, dogs wearing specialized shoes to protect them from injuries were scaling the mound of debris, sniffing for survivors. Off to the side, the dead lay on the ground in white bags, red and white tape wrapped around them.
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A MILITARY BASE IN SOUTHEASTERN POLAND (AP) — The top U.S. military officer, Army Gen. Mark Milley, traveled to a site near the Ukraine-Poland border on Tuesday and talked with his Ukrainian counterpart face to face for the first time — a meeting underscoring the growing ties between the two militaries and coming at a critical time as Russia's war with Ukraine nears the one-year mark.
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met for a couple of hours with Ukraine’s chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland. The two leaders have talked frequently about Ukraine's military needs and the state of the war over the past year but had never met.
The meeting comes as the international community ramps up the military assistance to Ukraine, including expanded training of Ukrainian troops by the U.S. and the provision of a Patriot missile battery, tanks and increased air defense and other weapons systems by the U.S. and a coalition of European and other nations.
It also marks a key time in the war. Ukraine's troops face fierce fighting in the eastern Donetsk province, where Russian forces — supplemented by thousands of private Wagner Group contractors — seek to turn the tide after a series of battlefield setbacks in recent months.
Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, told two reporters traveling with the chairman that the two generals felt it was important to meet in person. The reporters did not accompany Milley to the meeting and, under conditions set by the military, agreed to not identify the military base in southeastern Poland where they were located.
“These guys have been talking on a very regular basis for about a year now, and they’ve gotten to know each other,” Butler said. “They’ve talked in detail about the defense that Ukraine is trying to do against Russia’s aggression. And it’s important — when you have two military professionals looking each other in the eye and talking about very, very important topics, there’s a difference.”
Butler said there had been some hope that Zaluzhnyi would travel to Brussels for a meeting of NATO and other defense chiefs this week, but when it became clear on Monday that it would not happen, they quickly decided to meet in Poland, near the border.
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While a number of U.S. civilian leader s have gone into Ukraine, the Biden administration has made it clear that no uniformed military service members will go into Ukraine other than those connected to the embassy in Kyiv. Butler said only a small group — Milley and six of his senior staffers — traveled by car to the meeting.
He said that the meeting will allow Milley to relay Zaluzhnyi's concerns and information to the other military leaders during the NATO chiefs' meeting. Milley, he said, will be able to “describe the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that, and the way he does that is one by understanding it himself but by also talking to Zaluzhnyi on a regular basis.”
Milley also will be able to describe the new training of Ukrainian forces that the U.S. is doing at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. The chairman, who got his first look at the new, so-called combined arms instruction during a nearly two-hour visit there on Monday, has said it will better prepare Ukrainian troops to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks.
More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the expanded training program at the camp just a day before Milley arrived.
Milley and Zaluzhnyi's meeting kicks off a series of high-level gatherings of military and defense leaders this week. Milley and other chiefs of defense will meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, and then the so-called Ukraine Contact Group will gather at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. That group consists of about 50 top defense officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and they work to coordinate military contributions to Ukraine.
The meetings are expected to focus on Ukraine's ongoing and future military needs as the hard-packed terrain of the winter months turns into muddy roads and fields in the spring.
After several months of losing territory it had captured, Russia in recent days claimed it took control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting, but if Moscow’s troops take control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.
And in a barrage of airstrikes over the weekend, Russia struck Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the death toll in one apartment building rose to 44.
Western analysts point to signs that the Kremlin is digging in for a drawn-out war, and say the Russian military command is preparing for an expanded mobilization effort.
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Follow the AP's coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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BERLIN (AP) — Germany has become one of Ukraine's leading weapons suppliers in the 11 months since Russia's invasion, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz also has gained a reputation for hesitating to take each new step — generating impatience among allies.
Berlin’s perceived foot-dragging, most recently on the Leopard 2 battle tanks that Kyiv has long sought, is rooted at least partly in a post-World War II political culture of military caution, along with present-day worries about a possible escalation in the war.
On Friday, Germany inched closer to a decision to deliver the tanks, ordering a review of its Leopard stocks in preparation for a possible green light.
There was still no commitment, however. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius rejected the suggestion that Germany was standing in the way but said, “we have to balance all the pros and contras before we decide things like that, just like that.”
It's a pattern that has been repeated over the months as Scholz first held off pledging new, heavier equipment, then eventually agreed to do so.
Most recently, Germany said in early January that it would send 40 Marder armored personnel carriers to Ukraine — doing so in a joint announcement with the U.S., which pledged 50 Bradley armored vehicles.
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That decision followed months of calls for Berlin to send the Marder and stoked pressure for it to move up another step to the Leopard tank.
“There is a discrepancy between the actual size of the commitment and weapons deliveries — it’s the second-largest European supplier — and the hesitancy with which it is done,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a Berlin-based senior analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.
Scholz, an unshakably self-confident politician with a stubborn streak and little taste for bowing to public calls for action, has stuck resolutely to his approach. He has said that Germany won’t go it alone on weapons decisions and pointed to the need to avoid NATO becoming a direct party to the war with Russia.
As pressure mounted last week, he declared that he wouldn't be rushed into important security decisions by “excited comments.” And he insisted that a majority in Germany supports his government’s “calm, well-considered and careful” decision-making.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Scholz listed some of the equipment Germany has sent to Ukraine, declaring that it marks “a profound turning point in German foreign and security policy.”
That is, at least to some extent, true. Germany refused to provide lethal weapons before the invasion started, reflecting a political culture rooted in part in the memory of Germany's own history of aggression during the 20th century — including the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
“No German chancellor, of no party, wants to be seen out front in pushing a military agenda — you want to try all other options before you resort to that,” Kleine-Brockhoff said. “And therefore for domestic consumption, it is seen as a positive thing for a German chancellor not to lead on this, to be cautious, to be resistant, to have tried all other options.”
Scholz does face calls from Germany's center-right opposition and some in his three-party governing coalition to be more proactive on military aid; less so from his own center-left Social Democratic Party, which for decades was steeped in the legacy of Cold War rapprochement pursued by predecessor Willy Brandt in the early 1970s.
Scholz “decided early on that he does not want to lead militarily on Ukraine assistance,” Kleine-Brockhoff said, though “he wants to be a good ally and part of the alliance and in the middle of the pack.”
But the cautious approach “drives allies crazy” and raises questions over whether they can count on the Germans, Kleine-Brockhoff acknowledged.
Berlin kept up its caution on the Leopard tank even after Britain announced last week that it would provide Ukraine its own Challenger 2 tanks.
The hesitancy isn't just an issue between Berlin and Kyiv, since other countries would need Germany's permission to send their own stocks of German-made Leopards to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw would consider giving its tanks even without Berlin's permission.
“Consent is of secondary importance here. We will either obtain it quickly, or we will do the right thing ourselves,” Morawiecki said.
British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The Guardian and other newspapers this week that “to its credit, the German government’s position on military support for Ukraine has moved a very long way since the eve of the Russian invasion.”
But he argued that the tank issue has become “a litmus test of Germany’s courage to resist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s nuclear blackmail, overcome its own domestic cocktail of fears and doubts, and defend a free and sovereign Ukraine,” and that Scholz should lead a “European Leopard plan.”
Whether that will eventually happen remains to be seen. Scholz's government has insisted on close coordination with the United States, a possible reflection in part of the fact that Germany — unlike Britain and France — relies on the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
On Friday, Scholz's spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, denied reports that Germany had insisted it would only deliver Leopard tanks if the U.S. sends its own Abrams tanks. He rejected the notion that Berlin is trailing others and insisted it is taking the right approach.
“These are not easy decisions, and they need to be well-weighed," he said. "And this is about them being sustainable, that all can go along with them and stand behind them — and part of a leadership performance is keeping an alliance together.”
The U.S. has resisted providing M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, citing extensive and complex maintenance and logistical challenges with the high-tech vehicles. Washington believes it would be more productive to send German Leopards since many allies have them and Ukrainian troops would need less training than on the more difficult Abrams.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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BERLIN (AP) — Germany and the United States said Wednesday they will send battle tanks to Ukraine, the first stage of a coordinated effort by the West to provide dozens of the heavy weapons to help Kyiv break combat stalemates as Russia’s invasion enters its 12th month.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. will send 31 M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, reversing months of persistent arguments by Washington that the tanks were too difficult for Ukrainian troops to operate and maintain.
The U.S. decision follows Germany agreeing to send 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from its own stocks. Germany had said the Leopards would not be sent unless the U.S. put its Abrams on the table, not wanting to incur Russia’s wrath without the U.S. similarly committing its own tanks.
“This is the result of intensive consultations, once again, with our allies and international partners,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz told German lawmakers. “It was right, and it is important that we didn’t let ourselves be driven" into making the decision.
Biden said European allies have agreed to send enough tanks to equip two Ukrainian tank battalions, or a total of 62 tanks.
“With spring approaching, Ukrainian forces are working to defend the territory they hold and preparing for additional counter offenses,” Biden said. “To liberate their land, they need to be able to counter Russia’s evolving tactics and strategy on the battlefield in the very near term.”
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed satisfaction at the news. Several European countries have equipped their armies with Leopard 2 tanks, and Germany's announcement means they can give some of their stocks to Ukraine.
“German main battle tanks, further broadening of defense support and training missions, green light for partners to supply similar weapons. Just heard about these important and timely decisions in a call with Olaf Scholz,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter. “Sincerely grateful to the chancellor and all our friends in (Germany).”
Scholz spoke by phone Wednesday with Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, the German chancellery said in a statement. The exchange focused on the security situation in Ukraine and continued support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression.
All five leaders agreed to continue military support to Ukraine in close Euro-Atlantic coordination.
The long-awaited decision came after U.S. officials revealed Tuesday a preliminary agreement for the United States to send M1 Abrams tanks to help Ukraine's troops push back Russian forces that remain entrenched in the country's east almost a year after Russia invaded its neighbor. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not yet been made public.
It is not clear when or how the tanks would be delivered to Ukraine, or how soon they could have an impact on the battlefield. Military analysts have said Russian forces are thought to be preparing for a spring offensive.
The $400 million package announced Wednesday also includes eight M88 recovery vehicles — tank-like tracked vehicles that can tow the Abrams if it gets stuck.
Altogether, France, the U.K., the U.S., Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden will send hundreds of tanks and heavy armored vehicles to fortify Ukraine as it enters a new phase of the war and attempts to break through entrenched Russian lines.
While Ukraine's supporters previously have supplied tanks, they were Soviet models in the stockpiles of countries that once were in Moscow's sphere of influence but are now aligned with the West. Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials insisted their forces need more modern Western-designed tanks.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed Germany’s decision. "At a critical moment in Russia’s war, these can help Ukraine to defend itself, win and prevail as an independent nation,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.
Russia's ambassador to Germany, Sergey Nechayev, called Berlin’s decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine “extremely dangerous,” saying it “shifts the conflict to a new level of confrontation and contradicts the statements of German politicians about their reluctance to get involved in it.”
Scholz had insisted that any decision to provide Ukraine with the powerful tanks would need to be taken in conjunction with Germany's allies, chiefly the U.S. By getting Washington to commit some of its own tanks, Berlin hopes to share the risk of any backlash from Russia.
Ekkehard Brose, head of the German military’s Federal Academy for Security Policy, said tying the United States into the decision was crucial, to avoid Europe facing a nuclear-armed Russia alone.
But he also noted the deeper historic significance of the decision.
“German-made tanks will face off against Russian tanks in Ukraine once more,” he said, adding that this was “not an easy thought” for Germany, which takes its responsibility for the horrors of World War II seriously.
“And yet it is the right decision,” Brose said, arguing that it was up to Western democracies to help Ukraine stop Russia’s military campaign.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius cautioned that it would take about three months for the first tanks to be deployed in Ukraine. He described the Leopard 2 as “the best battle tank in the world.”
“This is an important game change, possibly also for this war, at least in the current phase,” he said.
The German government said it planned to swiftly begin training Ukrainian tank crews in Germany. The package being put together would also include logistics, ammunition and maintenance.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described German and U.S. intentions as a “a rather disastrous plan.”
“I am convinced that many specialists understand the absurdity of this idea,” Peskov said.
“Simply because of technological aspects, this is a rather disastrous plan. The main thing is, this is a completely obvious overestimation of the potential (the supply of tanks) would add to the armed forces of Ukraine. It is yet another fallacy, a rather profound one,” the Kremlin official said.
Peskov predicted “these tanks will burn down just like all the other ones. ... Except they cost a lot, and this will fall on the shoulders of European taxpayers.” he added.
Germany has already provided considerable amounts of military hardware to Ukraine, including powerful PzH 2000 howitzers, Iris-T air-defense systems and Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns that have proved highly effective against Russian drones. It also announced plans to supply a Patriot air-defense battery and Marder infantry fighting vehicles.
Ahead of Scholz's official announcement, members of his three-party coalition government welcomed the Cabinet's agreement to supply the domestically made tanks.
“The Leopard’s freed!” German lawmaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, a senior Green party lawmaker, said.
However, two smaller opposition parties criticized the move. The far-right Alternative for Germany, which has friendly ties to Russia, called the decision “irresponsible and dangerous.”
“Germany risks being drawn directly into the war as a result,” party co-leader Tino Chrupalla said.
Scholz sought to reassure people in his country who were concerned about the implications of sending tanks to Ukraine.
“Trust me, trust the government,” he said. “By acting in an internationally coordinated manner, we will ensure that this support is possible without the risks to our country growing in the wrong direction.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who had previously called into question Germany's commitment to helping Ukraine, thanked Scholz on Twitter for the “big step towards stopping Russia.”
Other European nations, such as Finland and Spain, indicated a willingness Wednesday to part with their own Leopard or similar battle tanks as part of a larger coalition.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, which had said it planned to send 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, welcomed Germany’s decision to further "strengthen Ukraine’s defensive firepower."
"Together, we are accelerating our efforts to ensure Ukraine wins this war and secures a lasting peace,” Sunak said on Twitter.
Still, it isn't clear whether Ukraine will receive the estimated 300 tanks that analysts say are required to keep Russia from advancing in Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces and to press a counteroffensive in the country's southeast.
___
Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee in Washington, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw and Jill Lawless in London contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Russia Freed Prisoners to Fight Its War. Here’s How Some Fared.
Tens of thousands of inmates have joined a mercenary group fighting with the Kremlin’s decimated forces in Ukraine. Some of them are returning to civilian life with military training and, in many cases, battlefield traumas.
By Anatoly Kurmanaev, Alina Lobzina and Ekaterina Bodyagina
Sign up for the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing. Every evening, we'll send you a summary of the day's biggest news. Get it sent to your inbox.
He was released from a Russian prison and thrown into battle in Ukraine with a promise of freedom, redemption and money. Now, Andrei Yastrebov, who was among tens of thousands of convict soldiers, is part of a return from the battlefield with potentially serious implications for Russian society.
Mr. Yastrebov, 22, who had been serving time for theft, returned home a changed man. “We all feel like he is in some sort of hypnosis, like he is a different person,” said a relative of his, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “He is without any emotions.”
continues.....
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WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of agonizing, the U.S has agreed to send longer-range bombs to Ukraine as it prepares to launch a spring offensive to retake territory Russia captured last year, U.S. officials said Thursday, confirming that the new weapons will have roughly double the range of any other offensive weapon provided by America.
The U.S. will provide ground-launched small diameter bombs as part of a $2.17 billion aid package it is expected to announce Friday, several U.S. officials said. The package also for the first time includes equipment to connect all the different air defense systems Western allies have rushed to the battlefield and integrate them into Ukraine's own air defenses, to help it better defend against Russia's missile attacks.
For months, U.S. officials have hesitated to send longer-range systems to Ukraine out of concern that they would be used to target inside Russia, escalating the conflict and drawing the U.S. deeper in. The longer-range bombs are the latest advanced system, such as Abrams tanks and the Patriot missile defense system, that the U.S. has eventually agreed to provide Ukraine after initially saying no. U.S. officials, though, have continued to reject Ukraine’s requests for fighter jets.
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Ukrainian leaders have urgently pressed for longer-range munitions, and on Thursday officials said the U.S. will send an undisclosed number of the ground-launched, small diameter bombs, which have a range of about 95 miles (150 kilometers). The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the aid package not yet made public.
To date, the longest-range missile provided by the U.S. is about 50 miles (80 kilometers). The funding in the aid package is for longer-term purchases, so it wasn't clear Thursday how long it will take to get the bomb to the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukraine's defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said Thursday the country is prepared to offer guarantees to its Western partners that their weapons won’t be used to strike inside Russian territory, adding that Kyiv needs weapons with a range of up to 300 kilometers ( about 185 miles) to expel the Russian forces.
“If we could strike at a distance of up to 300 kilometers, the Russian army wouldn’t be able to mount a defense and will have to withdraw,” Reznikov said at a meeting with EU officials. “Ukraine is ready to provide any guarantees that your weapons will not be involved in attacks on the Russian territory. We have enough targets in the occupied areas of Ukraine, and we’re prepared to coordinate on (these) targets with our partners."
The U.S. aid package includes $425 million in ammunition and support equipment that will be pulled from existing Pentagon stockpiles and $1.75 billion in new funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is used to purchase new weapons from industry.
The assistance initiative, which will pay for the longer-range bombs and the air defense system integration, also funds two HAWK air defense systems, anti-aircraft guns and ammunition, and counter-drone systems.
Since Russia's invasion last February, Western allies have pledged a myriad of air defense systems to Ukraine to bolster its own Soviet-made S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems, and the latest aid package aims to provide the capability to integrate them all, which could improve Ukraine's ability to protect itself against incoming Russian attacks.
The U.S. has pledged medium- to long-range National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and truck-launched short-range Avenger air defense systems; the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S. are sending Patriot missile defense systems; Germany is sending medium-range IRIS-T air defense systems; and Spain is sending Aspide anti-aircraft air defense systems.
The addition of longer-range bombs to the latest aid package was first reported by Reuters.
Ukraine is still seeking F-16 fighter jets, which U.S. President Joe Biden has opposed sending since the beginning of the war. Asked Monday if his administration was considering sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Biden responded, “No.”
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian defense minister was asked if Biden’s ’’no” to F-16s was the final word.
“All types of help first passed through the ‘no’ stage,” Reznikov said. “Which only means ‘no’ at today’s given moment. The second stage is, ‘Let’s talk and study technical possibilities.’ The third stage is, ‘Let’s get your personnel trained.’ And the fourth stage is the transfer (of equipment).”
—-
Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Dozens of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war have returned home following a prisoner swap, officials on both sides said Saturday.
Top Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak said in a Telegram post that 116 Ukrainians were freed.
He said the released POWs include troops who held out in Mariupol during Moscow’s monthslong siege that reduced the southern port city to ruins, as well as guerrilla fighters from the Kherson region and snipers captured during the ongoing fierce battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Russian defense officials, meanwhile, announced that 63 Russian troops had returned from Ukraine following the swap, including some “special category” prisoners whose release was secured following mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
A statement issued Saturday by the Russian Defense Ministry did not provide details about these “special category” captives.
At least three civilians have been killed in Ukraine over the past 24 hours as Russian forces struck nine regions in the country’s south, north and east, according to reports on Ukrainian TV by regional governors on Saturday morning.
Two people were killed and 14 others wounded in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region by Russian shelling and missile strikes, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update on Saturday morning.
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The casualty toll included a man who was killed and seven others who were wounded Friday after Russian missiles slammed into Toretsk, a town in the Donetsk region. Kyrylenko said that 34 houses, two kindergartens, an outpatient clinic, a library, a cultural centre and other buildings were damaged in the strike.
Seven teenagers received shrapnel wounds after an anti-personnel mine exploded late on Friday in the northeastern city of Izium, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. He said they were all hospitalized but their lives were not in danger.
Elsewhere, regional Ukrainian officials reported overnight shelling by Russia of border settlements in the northern Sumy region, as well as the town of Marhanets, which neighbors the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv has long accused Moscow of using the plant, which Russian forces seized early in the war, as a base for launching attacks on Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's defense minister expressed confidence Sunday that Western allies would agree to the country's latest weapons request — warplanes to fight off Russian forces that invaded nearly a year ago.
Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told a news conference in Kyiv that Ukraine has already received everything from its “wish list to Santa,” except planes.
“There will be planes, too," Reznikov predicted. “The question is just what kind exactly.... Consider that this mission is already completed.”
So far, Ukraine has won support from Baltic nations and Poland in its quest to obtain Western fighter jets. But several Western leaders have expressed concern that providing warplanes could provoke the Kremlin and draw their countries deeper into the conflict, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and wreaked massive destruction.
Kyiv says such jets are essential to challenging Russia’s air superiority and ensuring success in a Russian offensive that Reznikov predicted could begin around the war's one-year anniversary, Feb. 24.
"Not all Western weapons will arrive by then, but we have the resources and reserves to help stabilize and sustain the offensive,” Reznikov told reporters.
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Since the war began, Western leaders have balked at some of Ukraine's requests, such as for longer-range missiles and tanks, only to agree later. The warplanes are the latest example.
Ukraine has relocated its warplanes and concealed air defense assets, hampering Moscow’s efforts to gain full control of the skies. After suffering early losses, the Russian air force has avoided venturing deep into Ukraine’s airspace and mostly focused on close front line support.
German-made tanks are on the way to Ukraine. Reznikov said his forces would begin training on Leopard tanks in Europe on Monday, before their delivery to Ukraine. So far, Canada, Poland, Germany, Great Britain and the United States have announced they will supply tanks to Ukraine.
The Kremlin has said Western countries' supply of increasingly sophisticated and more weapons will only prolong the conflict, and it has characterized NATO as a direct participant. Reznikov, commenting on the supply of Western weapons and the state of the Ukrainian army, took the rhetoric further on Sunday, telling reporters: “I absolutely boldly claim that we have become a de facto NATO country. We only have a de jure part left.”
Ukraine has applied to join NATO, as have two of Russia's other neighbors, Finland and Sweden.
On the battlefield, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said four people were injured Sunday when a Russian S-300 missile fell near an apartment block in Kharkiv city, and another was hurt when a missile hit a university building. Video showed the building hit was the National Academy for Urban Economy, about 700 meters from the city's central square.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, one of four regions that Russia illegally annexed last year even though its forces do not fully control the area. Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said five civilians were wounded in rocket attacks during the night in the city of Druzhkivka and that the town of Avdiivka and its outskirts were also fired on.
In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, the epicenter of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said Sunday it had repelled Russian attacks. The founder of the mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a Telegram post that Kyiv's forces were not retreating and that “there are fierce battles for every street, every house, every stairwell.”
In the Black Sea port of Odesa, workers labored to connect temporary generators shipped in to restore electricity. The city and surrounding area were plunged into darkness over the weekend following a large-scale network failure.
Grid operator Ukrenergo said that the failure involved equipment “repeatedly repaired” after Russia’s savage strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, and that residents should brace themselves for lengthy blackouts.
As of Sunday afternoon, about 280,000 customers — 40% of the customers — remained without power, said prime minister Denis Shmyhal.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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LONDON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed for fighter jets to ensure his country's victory over Russia in a dramatic speech before the U.K. Parliament, where he also thanked the British people for their support since “Day One” of Moscow's invasion.
The embattled leader's surprise visit to Britain in a bid for more advanced weapons comes as Ukraine braces for an expected Russian offensive and hatches its own plans to retake land held by Moscow's forces. Western support has been key to Kyiv's surprisingly stiff defense, and the two sides are engaged in grinding battles.
It was only Zelenskyy's second foreign trip since Russia invaded on Feb, 24, 2022, after a December visit to Washington. French President Emmanuel Macron's office said he would host Zelenskyy and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris later in the day, and expectations were growing that he might meet European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday.
Before that, Sunak and Zelenskyy are due to visit Ukrainian troops being trained on the Challenger 2 tanks that Britain is sending as part of the hundreds that Kyiv says it needs.
Hundreds of lawmakers and parliamentary staff packed the 900-year-old Westminster Hall, the oldest — and, on a cold winter day, unheated — part of Parliament for Zelenskyy’s speech.
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Zelenskyy, wearing his trademark olive drab sweatshirt, urged allies to send his country jets, saying combat aircraft would be “wings for freedom.”
In a pointed and dramatic gesture, Zelenskyy presented the speaker of the House of Commons with a Ukrainian air force helmet, inscribed by a Ukrainian pilot: “We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it.”
The president is trying to soften allies' reluctance to send advanced fighter jets, both because they are complex to fly and for fear of escalating the war.
The U.K. has repeatedly said it’s not practical to provide the Ukrainian military with British warplanes. But in a shift, the government said Wednesday it was “actively looking” at whether Ukraine could be sent Western jets, and was “in discussion with our allies” about it.
Britain announced it would train Ukrainian pilots in Britain on “NATO-standard fighter jets” within weeks.
Sunak spokesman Max Blain said the government was exploring “what jets we may be able to give” over the coming years, but had not made a decision on whether to send its F-35 or Typhoons.
“We think it is right to provide both short-term equipment … that can help win the war now, but also look to the medium to long term to make sure Ukraine has every possible capacity it requires,” he said.
Ukraine has sought fighter jets from its allies since early in the war to bolster its force of Soviet-made MiG-29 and Su fighters. The success of its air force in continuing to defend its skies and territory fly despite Russia’s much bigger numbers helped push back Moscow’s initial assault.
Macron has said France hasn't ruled out sending fighter jets but set conditions before such a step is taken, including not leading to an escalation of tensions or using the aircraft “to touch Russian soil,” and not resulting in weakening “the capacities of the French army.”
Zelenskyy also went to Buckingham Palace, where he met with King Charles III, who greeted him with a broad smile and a warm handshake before they held a meeting over tea. The king told the president that “we’ve all been worried about you and thinking about your country for so long.”
In his Parliament speech, Zelenskyy noted that Charles was a qualified military pilot.
“The king is an air force pilot,” Zekenskyy said, and “in Ukraine today, every air force pilot is a king.”
Zelenskyy was greeted with applause, cheers and cries of “Slava Ukraini” — “Glory to Ukraine” — as he arrived in Parliament, where his cause has wide support from both the Conservative government and opposition parties.
He had addressed the U.K. Parliament remotel y in March, two weeks after the start of the invasion. He echoed World War II leader Winston Churchill’s famous “never surrender” speech, vowing that Ukrainians “will fight till the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.”
On Wednesday, he recalled how on a prewar visit to London, he sat on Churchill's chair in his subterranean wartime headquarters, and had a feeling that he only now understood.
“It was the feeling of how bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory," Zelenskyy said.
In past wars, “evil lost,” Zekenskyy told U.K. lawmakers. “We know Russia will lose and we we know victory will change the world.″
The U.K. has sent Ukraine more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) in weapons and equipment, and Zelenskyy thanked Sunak and his predecessor Boris Johnson for their staunch backing. Sunak took office in October and has pledged to maintain the U.K.’s support.
“Boris, you got others united when it seemed absolutely impossible,” Zelenskyy said.
He also urged stronger sanctions against Moscow until “Russia is deprived of any possibility to finance this war.”
Zelenskyy thanked Britons for their bravery, adding: “London has stood with Kyiv since Day One.”
The Ukrainian leader arrived on a Royal Air Force plane in London, and Sunak greeted him on the tarmac, tweeting a photo of them embracing. They held talks at the prime minister's 10 Downing St. residence before Zelenskyy's speech.
Sunak and Zelenskyy also are due to visit Ukrainian troops being trained on the Challenger 2 tanks that Britain is sending as part of the hundreds that Kyiv says it needs. More than 10,000 Ukrainian troops have also been trained at bases in the U.K., and Britain says it will train 20,000 more in 2023.
“I am proud that today we will expand that training from soldiers to marines and fighter jet pilots, ensuring Ukraine has a military able to defend its interests well into the future," Sunak said.
Coinciding with the visit, the U.K. government announced a new round of sanctions against six entities that Britain said supplied equipment to the Russian military. CST, a manufacturer of Russian drones and parts for helicopters used against Ukraine, were among those sanctioned.
There were rising expectations that Zelenskyy might visit Brussels, where leaders from the 27-nation bloc are holding a summit Thursday. The EU's legislature has also slated a special plenary session that day.
The London visit came as Russian forces shelled areas of eastern Ukraine in what Kyiv authorities believe is part of a thrust by the Kremlin’s forces before the invasion anniversary. Moscow, meanwhile, believes Ukraine is preparing its own battlefield push.
___
Danica Kirka and Sylvia Hui in London and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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BRUSSELS (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that “a Ukraine that is winning” should become a European Union member, arguing the bloc wouldn't be whole without his country being an integral part of the EU.
Zelenskky made his comments during an address to the European Parliament on a rare trip outside Ukraine, which has been trying to repel a full-scale invasion by Russia for nearly a year.
The Brussels visit came as Russia intensified its attacks in eastern Ukraine amid signs that a major new offensive by Moscow was underway before the Feb. 24 anniversary of the war.
Zelenskky, who also visited the U.K. and France on a whirlwind European tour that started on Wednesday, will already head home with heaps of goodwill and commitments of more military aid.
He arrived to the European Parliament to rapturous applause, cheering and hoots from legislators, insisting in his plenary speech that Ukraine's fight against Russia was one fought for the freedom of Europe as a whole.
“A Ukraine that is winning is going to be member of the European Union,” Zelenskyy said to applause, building his address around the common destiny that Ukraine and the 27-nation bloc face in confronting Russia head-on.
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“Europe will always be, and remain Europe as long as we ... take care of the European way of life,” he said.
Zelenskyy added that Russia wants to destroy the European way of life, but “we will not allow that.”
He held up an EU flag after his address and the entire legislature stood in somber silence as the Ukrainian national anthem and the European anthem “Ode to Joy” were played one after the other.
Zelenskyy then headed to the urn-shaped Europa building, where the 27 EU leaders were meeting in a summit, to push those same points.
Before Zelenskyy spoke, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said allies should consider “quickly, as a next step, providing long-range systems” and fighter jets to Ukraine. Metsola said the response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine “must be proportional to the threat, and the threat is existential.”
Metsola also told him that “we have your back. We were with you then, we are with you now, we will be with you for as long as it takes.”
EU leaders were hoping to impress on Zelenskyy that the powerful bloc is steadfast in its support for Ukraine as Russia is feared to be making moves for a new offensive.
The latest draft of the summit conclusions seen by The Associated Press says “the European Union will stand by Ukraine with steadfast support for as long as it takes." Military analysts say Putin is hoping that Europe's support for Ukraine will wane.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the bloc will send Zelenskyy "this signal of unity and solidarity, and can show that we will continue our support for Ukraine in defending its independence and integrity for as long as this is necessary.”
Zelenskyy’s high-profile pursuit of more Western military aid came as evidence mounted that Russia’s anticipated offensive around the anniversary of the invasion is starting to take shape.
The Kremlin’s forces “have regained the initiative in Ukraine and have begun their next major offensive” in the eastern Luhansk region, most of which is occupied by Russia, the Institute for the Study of War, said in its latest assessment.
“Russian forces are gradually beginning an offensive, but its success is not inherent or predetermined,” the U.S.-based think tank said.
Zelenskyy used the dais of the European Parliament hoping to match Wednesday's speech to Britain's legislature when he thanked the nation for its unrelenting support.
That same support has come from the EU. The bloc and its member states have already backed Kyiv with about 50 billion euros ($53.6 billion) in aid, provided military hardware and imposed nine packages of sanctions on the Kremlin.
The EU is in the midst of brokering a new sanctions package worth about 10 billion euros ($10.7 billion) before the war's anniversary. And there is still plenty of scope for exporting more military hardware to Ukraine as a Russian spring offensive is expected.
Russia is also watching Zelenskyy's movements closely. On Wednesday, Russian state television showed the flight path of a British air force plane that Zelenskyy used to travel to London taken from a flight monitoring site. The anchor noted that the plane flew from the Polish air base in Rzeszow that serves as a hub for Western arms deliveries to Ukraine.
A high-profile visit to EU headquarters where the summit was being held should add to the goodwill to help his country on to the road of accession talks. Ukraine is talking about joining the EU in a matter of years, while practice has shown it can take decades before aspiring members are considered fit to join.
Beyond EU top officials like the summit host, European Council President Charles Michel, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Zelenskyy should find time for bilateral meetings with leaders to press for more hardware, ranging from ammunition to warplanes — something the bloc as a whole doesn't possess but individual countries do.
Meanwhile, fighting intensified in Ukraine on Thursday.
In the eastern Donetsk region the front line expanded significantly over the previous day, with fierce battles taking place as Moscow’s forces closed in on key Ukrainian-held towns, according to regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. Russian shelling struck a kindergarten, hospital, cultural center, factory and apartment buildings, he said.
“The intensity of the shelling has increased dramatically and we are seeing a significant intensification of activity by the Russian army immediately in the south, center and north of the region,” Kyrylenko said. “Russia is again actively using combat aircraft to shell our cities and villages.”
Russian forces also stepped up their attacks in neighboring Luhansk province, launching “a broad offensive,” regional Governor Serhii Haidai said.
In the northeastern Kharkiv province, 23 cities and villages came under shelling. In the border city of Vovchansk, shelling damaged around 10 apartment buildings.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a small coal-mining town on Ukraine’s eastern front line, a fight for strategic superiority is being waged in a battlefield steeped with symbolism as the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion nears.
The town of Vuhledar — meaning “gift of coal” — has emerged as a critical hot spot in the fight for Donetsk province that would give both sides, the Ukrainian forces who hold the urban center, and the Russians positioned in the suburbs, a tactical upper hand in the greater battle for the Donbas region.
Located on an elevated plane that is one of the few high-terrain spots in the area, its capture would be an important step for Russia to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines. Securing Vuhledar would give Ukraine a potential launching pad for future counter-offensives south.
Then there is the symbolic weight: Vuhledar is close to the administrative border of Donetsk province, and winning it would play into Russia’s greater aim of controlling the region as a whole.
“The center of gravity of the Russian military effort is in Donetsk, and Vuhledar is basically the southern flank of that,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relation’s Berlin office.
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The grinding fight to win the area has cost Russia manpower and weapons, as Ukrainians continue to hold up defensive lines. Russia sends battalion-sized scout groups to probe Ukrainian lines and shoot artillery toward their positions with an eye to pushing north toward the critical N15 highway, a key supply route.
In remarks this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian troops were advancing “with success” in Vuhledar. Meanwhile, a British defense intelligence briefing said Russia's aim was to capture unoccupied areas of Ukrainian-held Donetsk but it was unlikely to build up the forces required to change the outcome of the war.
Vuhledar’s pre-war population of 14,000 has dwindled to about 300. The majority of the town’s residents worked in the coal mine and nearby factories before the war.
Olha Kyseliova, who was recently evacuated, worked in a brick factory before the fighting upended her life.
Russian forces ramped up attacks beginning on Jan. 24, residents said. That day, a missile tore through Kyseliova's nine-story building. She was sheltering in the basement with her three children and emerged to find a gaping hole through the roof of her third-floor apartment.
That was the moment she decided she had to leave her hometown. “I cried the entire way out, I didn’t want to leave,” she said.
Three Ukrainian brigades are positioned in Vuhledar and on the outskirts of the town. The Associated Press spoke to five commanders in units from all three, who provided only their first names in keeping with Ukraine's military policy. Russia’s 155 Marine infantry troops are positioned just four kilometers (two miles) away in Vuhledar’s suburbs.
For both sides, the town is tactically important.
“It’s one of the main logistics points of the Donbas region, and also one of the main points of elevation,” said Maksym, the deputy commander of a Ukrainian marine infantry battalion. “By capturing Vuhledar, Russians can easily occupy the entire Donetsk region.”
Seizing Vuhledar would enable Russia to push forward and threaten Ukrainian supply lines feeding into the fierce Marinka front line to the north, said Gressel of the European Council on Foreign Relations. For Ukraine, Vuhledar would be a launching pad for future counter-offensives toward Mariupol and Berdiansk.
From their perch in the town, Ukrainian forces can see into Russian lines and have so far been able to repel Russian attempts to encircle Vuhledar. Columns of Russian tanks and armored vehicles transporting infantrymen continuously assault and attempt to break Ukrainian defenses. Aviation, rockets and artillery target the town.
“But with our fighters and anti-tank equipment their attempts have not been successful,” said Maksym, the Ukrainian deputy commander. “The situation is strained, but controlled.”
Similar to other front lines along the east, the Russians are losing scores of infantrymen in an attempt to tire and weaken Ukrainian defensive lines. Serhii, the commander of a Ukrainian intelligence unit, said he saw Russian soldiers sent straight through fields mined by the Ukrainians following Russia’s capture of the village of Pavlivka, south of Vuhledar, in November.
“They de-mine our fields by using their own people,” he said.
Ukrainian commanders said some of their units are suffering from dire ammunition shortages.
That view was not shared across brigades, suggesting some are better supplied than others. Taras, the commander of a mortar unit, said his forces were suffering very serious shortages. Faced with orders to target an enemy position, he said, “I have just two or three rounds of ammunition to do it. It’s nothing.”
Two commanders of a brigade inside Vuhledar reported the Russians hurled gas-laden projectiles that caused severe disorientation for hours, and burning of the throat and skin. Higher-ranking commanders did not comment on the type of gas used and said an investigation was ongoing.
“They are probing and testing us across the eastern front line, including in Vuhledar,” said Oleksandr, a commander who was recently rotated out of the town. “They are trying to find our points of weakness.”
For now, Russia’s activities around Vuhledar are not “operationally significant,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War. More combat power is required to execute breakthroughs that would achieve the stated aim of the Russian invasion — the capture of the entire Donetsk province.
Even in the event of victory in Vuhledar, Russia would still need a lot of combat power to push north. Three months after capturing the village of Pavlivka in November, Russian forces have yet to make breakthroughs in Vuhledar, which is only four kilometers — a six-minute drive — away.
“It’s not operationally significant because Russians will still have to fight for more territory to make a meaningful disruption of Ukrainian ground lines of communication to western Donetsk,” Stepanenko said. Vuhledar is just "one settlement on their way, where they are already suffering significant losses and where they already seem to have suffered losses in the area before.”
Meanwhile, the last of Vuhledar’s residents said they are staying put.
Oleksandra Havrylko, police press officer for the Donetsk region, pleads with those who remain to leave the devastated area. Most spend their days hiding in basements, coming out when there are lulls in fighting to charge phones and gather supplies in the town’s points of refuge, called “invincibility centers”.
All but one of the town's children have been evacuated. The father of a 15-year-old, the last remaining minor in the town, refuses to part with his son or leave the area, she said.
“There are people in the city who don’t want to be evacuated, we tried many times,” she said. Most have never ventured far from their hometown.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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