Ukraine-Russia updates: Military aid prompts Moscow warning

Germany’s new defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has confirmed that Berlin will not take unilateral action when it comes to providing Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine.

“We’ll have to wait and see if that rolls along. We are in talks, especially with our transatlantic partner, the United States,” he told broadcaster RTL.

“Just as we have done in all other cases before, the point is not to go it alone.”

Repeating the line taken by German officials for months, he said this was about “concerted” action, just as it had been recently with the Marder infantry fighting vehicles.

Israel’s new Foreign Minister Eli Cohen promised Ukraine continued humanitarian aid with a focus on restoring energy infrastructure and providing medical equipment, he has said after a call with Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

Cohen also said he would fully reopen the Israeli embassy in Kyiv within the next 60 days, after the first conversation between the two since the new Israeli government was sworn in late last year.

Poland’s prime minister said he was “moderately pessimistic” about Germany giving other countries permission to re-export Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

“I am moderately sceptical, moderately pessimistic because the Germans are defending themselves against this like a devil protects himself against holy water,” Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters.

Serbia’s government said it will send Ukraine “humanitarian aid” to support its power grid.

“The Government of Serbia has decided to send humanitarian aid in priority equipment to Ukraine in order to support the country’s electricity system,” it said after a session of parliament.

Serbia, which aspires to become a European Union member, has resisted implementing Western sanctions on Russia because of its war on Ukraine.

The head of the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog says he is worried the world is becoming complacent about the considerable dangers posed by the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia atomic plant in Ukraine.

Russian forces captured the plant, Europe’s largest, in March and it has repeatedly come under fire in recent months, raising fears of a nuclear disaster. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is working to set up a safe zone around the facility.

Speaking to reporters in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Grossi said a nuclear accident could happen any day and reiterated that the situation at the plant was very precarious.

“I worry that this is becoming routine, that people may believe that nothing has happened so far, so is the director general of the IAEA crying wolf?” he said when addressing reporters during a visit to Ukraine.

“It [an accident] can happen any time and my duty is to do everything I can to prevent that from happening.”

A senior NATO commander has warned that Western tanks will not be a “silver bullet” for Ukraine in its fight with Russia, despite Kyiv’s new arsenal outperforming Moscow’s weaponry.

“There is not a particular weapon system that is a silver bullet. A balance of all systems is needed,” said US General Christopher Cavoli, supreme allied commander in Europe, after a meeting of NATO military chiefs.

But he added that “it’s clearly the case that modern Western technology is outperforming Russian technology” on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The Russian army has launched a “local offensive” near the town of Orikhiv in southern Ukraine, where the front has been largely stagnant for months, a Russian-installed official said.

“Our troops have gone into a local offensive around Orikhiv,” the head of Moscow’s installed authorities in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Vladimir Rogov said, according to Russian state media.

Rogov alleged the front had slightly shifted and that some Ukrainian troops had retreated.

“Our troops are holding their positions,” he said.

“The territory of the Zaporizhzhia region liberated from Ukrainian fighters is gradually increasing.”

Weapons from Bulgaria reached Ukraine via intermediaries long before the first official military aid package was sent by the government in Sofia, media reported, citing Bulgaria’s former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov.

The exports did not run from government to government, but were moved through third-party companies in Bulgaria and abroad, according to Bulgarian news reports.

Petkov confirmed that “partners” from Poland, Romania, the United States and United Kingdom “bought weapons from Bulgarian industry”.

“Yes, some of these weapons went to the Ukrainian army,” he was quoted as saying.

Russia has rejected objections by the European Jewish Congress (EJC) to Russia’s comparison of the United States to Adolf Hitler.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the congress discredited itself long ago when it ignored what it called manifestations of anti-Semitism and glorification of Nazi ideology in Ukraine.

“The opinion of an organisation that has ignored the catastrophic level of anti-Semitism in Ukraine for many years is not interesting.”

“The European Jewish Congress managed not to notice the symbols of the [Nazi] SS, swastikas, and glorification of Nazi collaborators by the Kyiv regime. The structure has discredited itself in this direction,” the ministry told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.

Speaking earlier at a news conference in Moscow on Russia’s foreign policy in 2022, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Washington seeks “the final solution of the Russian question” – using a term referring to the Holocaust – just as Hitler wanted to solve what he called the “Jewish question”.

Several countries will announce plans to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Friday at a meeting at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Lithuania’s defence minister has said.

“Some of the countries will definitely send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, that is for sure”, Arvydas Anusauskas told the Reuters news agency about the pledges, speaking after a preparatory meeting of 11 nations in Estonia.

The total number of armoured vehicles pledged at Ramstein will run into the hundreds, he added.

A group of nine nations including the United Kingdom, Poland and the Netherlands has pledged to pursue providing Ukraine with an “unprecedented set of donations” including battle tanks to help it fight off Russia’s invasion.

“We commit to collectively pursuing delivery of an unprecedented set of donations including main battle tanks, heavy artillery, air defence, ammunition, and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine’s defence,” the countries said in a joint statement.

The statement, published on the UK government’s website, was made by the defence ministers of Britain, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, and representatives from Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Slovakia following a meeting in Estonia.

The president of the European Council has called for Ukraine’s Western allies to supply it with tanks as it faces down Russia’s offensive.

“I firmly believe that tanks must be delivered,” Charles Michel said in a post on Twitter following talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

“We want to support you because we are aware that the next few weeks may be decisive for what comes next,” he added.

Serbian and pro-Ukraine activists have filed criminal complaints against Russia’s private military Wagner Group and its supporters, accusing it of recruiting Serbs to fight in Ukraine.

Cedomir Stojkovic, a Belgrade-based lawyer who also leads the October civic group, said that those accused include Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, and Aleksandar Vulin, head of Serbia’s state Security and Information Agency (BIA).

“We have reasonable suspicion that Vulin … gave orders, directives and guidelines that the activities of the Wagner Group in Serbia should not be prevented,” he said.

Stojkovic said that Botsan-Kharchenko, who enjoys diplomatic immunity, could not be prosecuted in Serbia, but that he should be ordered to leave the country. Once a criminal complaint is filed, it is up to the state prosecutor to decide whether or not to proceed.

Denmark will donate 19 French-made Caesar howitzer artillery systems to Ukraine, the country’s defence minister has said.

“We have been in continuous contact with the Ukrainians about the Caesar artillery in particular and I am happy that we have now received broad support from the Danish parliament to donate it to Ukraine’s freedom struggle,” Jakob Ellemann-Jensen said in a statement.

His announcement came after fellow Nordic nation Sweden earlier on Thursday announced a new package of military aid to Ukraine worth 4.3 billion Swedish crowns ($419m).

The package includes armoured infantry fighting vehicles and the Archer artillery system as well as light, portable NLAW anti-tank weapons, mine-clearing equipment and assault rifles.

The United Kingdom will send 600 Brimstone missiles to Ukraine to support the country in its fight against Russia, defence secretary Ben Wallace has said.

“If [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin is banking on us getting bored this year, he’s wrong. We will plan for this year and next year and the year after and beyond,” Wallace said at a meeting with other European defence ministers at the Tapa army base in Estonia.

US Congressman Seth Moulton has told Al Jazeera the war in Ukraine is currently “in between phases” nearly 11 months after the conflict started.

“What’s happening behind the scenes is as important as what is happening on the front lines,” Moulton told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Russia says it is getting more people to the front and gearing up for a new offensive, while Ukraine says it is gearing up for a Ukrainian counteroffensive,” he said. “So the question is, what happens next.”

Moulton warned the war would expand beyond Ukraine if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offensive was not brought to an unsuccessful end.

“What we [the West] does in Ukraine also has important implications for the situation developing in the Pacific between China and Taiwan. We need to show Chinese President Xi Jinping that we are not going to accept aggression in the Pacific in the same way that we are so united in stopping agression in Europe.”

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

Ukraine hopes battle tanks supplied by Western allies will become the backbone of a new fighting force as it seeks to push back invading Russian forces.

The United Kingdom has already pledged to deliver more than a dozen of its Challenger 2 units to Kyiv, while pressure is mounting on Germany to follow suit and deliver its own Leopard 2s.

Read more here.

The war in Ukraine initially brought Europe and the United States closer together, but domestic realities may now be pulling them apart.

Find out more here.

Ukraine’s foreign minister has welcome the European Parliament’s push for the creation of a special court to judge Russia “for the crime of aggression against Ukraine”.

Dmytro Kuleba hailed the move as an “important step toward a legal mechanism for putting [the] Russian leadership on trial and preventing such crimes in the future”.