Russia-Ukraine updates: Ukraine ‘holding on’ to Soledar

Zelenskyy says Poland offering Leopard tanks to Ukraine could lead other countries to follow its example.

The president spoke a day after Poland said it would send the tanks.

“A company of Leopard tanks will be handed over as part of coalition-building,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said during a visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. “We want it to be an international coalition.”

Kyiv has been requesting heavy military vehicles, such as the German-made Leopard 2, which would represent a significant step-up in Western support to Ukraine.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba urged Germany to supply Leopard tanks during his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock’s visit to the city of Kharkiv this week.

More than a dozen senior European Union officials will visit Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on February 2 to meet members of the Ukrainian government, a day before the EU-Ukraine summit, according to the European Commission spokesperson.

The visit demonstrates “the extent of our work with Ukraine” and shows the EU’s support for the country, Dana Spinant said.

Spinant told the AFP news agency that “around 15 commissioners” – out of 27 – could visit Kyiv for the meeting.

Zelenskyy will meet European Council and European Commission Presidents Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen on February 3 to discuss financial and military support for their fight against Russia.

The German government’s net borrowing rose to 115.4 billion euros ($124.5bn) in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to the finance minister, Christian Lindner.

Government borrowing in 2022 was at its third-highest level in the country’s history, following a record 215.4 billion euros ($233.7bn) in 2021 and 130.5 billion ($141.6bn) in 2020, according to the finance ministry.

“We are not exhausting all borrowing possibilities by hook or by crook, but only as far as necessary,” Lindner said.

Germany spent 481.3 billion euros ($522.3bn) last year, 14.5 billion euros ($15.7bn) less than planned, according to the finance ministry. This compared with an expenditure of 557.1 billion euros ($604.5bn) in 2021.

The German parliament suspended the constitutionally enshrined debt brake between 2020 and 2022 to allow for extra spending in response to the pandemic and the effects of the war in Ukraine.

Russia has released Taylor Dudley, a US Navy veteran who had been held in the country’s Kaliningrad territory for nine months, negotiator and former US politician Bill Richardson announced.

According to CNN, Dudley, 35, had crossed into Kaliningrad, an exclave between Poland and Lithuania, from Poland where he had been attending a music festival.

“Earlier today, Russian authorities released American Citizen Taylor Dudley, a 35-year-old Navy veteran, across the Polish border to Gov. Bill Richardson,” Jonathan Franks, who represents the Dudley family, said in a statement.

“The past 9 months have been difficult ones for the family and they ask the media to respect their privacy and give them the space to welcome Taylor home,” it added.

Russia says its forces are edging closer to capturing Soledar, a salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine, which would mark an elusive victory for the Kremlin but comes at the cost of heavy Russian casualties and extensive destruction of the territory they claim.

Read more here.

Russia has appointed Valery Gerasimov as its overall commander of forces for the war in Ukraine.

The 67-year-old played key roles in Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and in Moscow’s game-changing military support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s War.

Read more about his appointment here.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from near the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, about 10km (6 miles) from Soledar, says there is a lot of “heavy shelling” taking place in the area.

“In the last few minutes, we have heard heavy machine gun fire as well,” Stratford said.

“There’s a [Ukrainian] checkpoint very close to us as well, at which we were prevented from going any further towards Bakhmut. It seems as if they’re only allowing the military through,” he added.

Stratford said the situation in the region had changed “dramatically” in the past few months, with fighting intensifying as Moscow presses for control of Soledar and Bakhmut.

“We have been speaking to soldiers who have been inside Bakhmut and asking them about the situation in the city and in Soledar. They said to us that Russian forces were in the centre of Soledar and in control of its salt mine,” he said.

“They described Russian tanks in the centre of Soledar as well and said there are concerns among the Ukrainian forces about possible escape routes for the Ukrainian troops inside Soledar … and that they [the troops] were trying to protect a western route out of the town.”

Here are three maps that we update daily to chart the latest war developments:

A delegation headed by the commander of Russia’s ground forces, Oleg Salyukov, has visited Belarus to inspect the combat readiness of a joint force stationed there, the Belarusian defence ministry says.

The visit took place a day after Salyukov was named one of the deputy commanders of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in the latest of a series of reshuffles.

Russia and Belarus, its close ally, have beefed up their joint military group in Belarus and plan to hold joint aviation drills there from the beginning of next week.

The exercises are part of a pattern of activity that has caused fears in Ukraine that Moscow might try to use Belarus to launch a new ground invasion of Ukraine from the north.

Ukraine has expressed its disappointment in signals that the new Israeli government may establish closer ties with Russia.

Read more here.

Germany should not stand in the way of other countries’ military support for Kyiv, the country’s vice chancellor has said in reference to a Polish push to send German-built Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine.

“Germany should not stand in the way of other countries taking decisions to support Ukraine, independent of which decisions Germany takes,” Robert Habeck said in response to a reporter’s question on the initiative.

Russia could raise the upper age limit for citizens to be conscripted into the armed forces as soon as this spring, a senior politician has said, as part of Moscow’s plans to boost the number of Russian troops by 30 percent.

The chairman of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov, said in an interview with the official parliamentary newspaper that Moscow could raise the upper age limit for conscription to 30 for this year’s spring draft.

But only after a one-to-three-year “transition period” would the lower limit be raised from 18 to 21 years, Kartapolov said.

Critics said the idea of a transition period was a transparent attempt by Russian authorities to increase the number of Russians eligible to be called up for military service to plug massive manpower shortages resulting from heavy losses in the war in Ukraine.

A Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region has said “pockets of resistance” remain in the town of Soledar, according to a report by Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.

TASS quoted Andrei Baevsky, a deputy of the parliament of the breakaway, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, as saying the western part of Soledar was now fully under the control of Russian forces as fighting for the rest of the town continued.

“At the moment, indeed, there are still separate small pockets of resistance in Soledar, [but] our guys continue to crush the enemy in these places,” Baevsky said.

“In general, the operation [has] developed successfully and the western outskirts of Soledar are already completely under our control,” he added.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the battlefield reports. Ukrainian officials said earlier on Thursday that Kyiv’s forces were battling to retain control of Soledar but admitted the situation there remained “difficult”.

To analysts, if Moscow is able to capture Soledar, a tiny salt-mining town in Ukraine’s war-scarred east, the “victory” would be little more than a consolation prize for Russia’s failing military effort.

To the Kremlin and pro-Moscow separatists, though, taking the town with a pre-war population of nearly 10,000 would be a groundbreaking triumph.

And to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner Group, a private army, Soledar offers access to mineral riches, a stash of firearms and a higher place in the Kremlin’s pecking order.

Read more here.

The Wagner Group is a notoriously shadowy deadly fighting force made up of mercenaries.

It has been linked to Russia’s military interests around the world, including in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali.

Al Jazeera spoke to one of the group’s fighters about what life is like as a soldier for hire. Listen below.

Car sales in Russia collapsed by 58.8 percent in 2022, the Association of European Businesses (AEB) has said, as the industry continues to reel from the effect of Western sanctions on Moscow.

Total car sales for the year came in at 687,370, compared with more than 1.6 million in 2021, the AEB said. In the month of December, sales were down 50.2 percent.

Several Russian carmakers suspended production for periods last year, as the industry struggled to source parts and establish new supply chains following the imposition of sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry has questioned whether Sweden has “something to hide” over blasts along the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September.

Addressing reporters at a news briefing, Maria Zakharova also reiterated criticism of the Swedish government for not sharing information from the ongoing investigations into the incidents.

Sweden and other European investigators say the attacks were carried out on purpose but they have not said who they think was responsible. Moscow, without providing evidence, has blamed the explosions on Western sabotage.

“Maybe Russian investigators, conducting an objective investigation, could come to an inconvenient conclusion … about who conducted this act of sabotage, terrorism. About who thought it up, and who carried it out,” Zakharova said.

Russia is building up its forces in Ukraine but Kyiv’s troops are holding out in fierce fighting for control of the eastern town of Soledar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has said.

Hanna Malyar told a news briefing that the number of Russian military units in Ukraine had risen to 280 from 250 a week earlier.

“They [the Russians] are moving over their own corpses,” Malyar said of the fighting for Soledar, which Wagner Group mercenaries have been fighting to take control of for weeks.

“Russia is driving its own people to the slaughter by the thousands, but we are holding on,” she added.

Russia’s foreign ministry says Moscow has imposed sanctions on 36 individuals in connection with the “anti-Russian course” adopted by the United Kingdom’s government.

The list includes politicians, security officials and journalists, the ministry said in a statement.

The statement says London is deliberately refusing constructive dialogue, “continues the line of confrontation, in collaboration with Washington, and spreads false information about Russia, [and] incites Russophobia”.