DIRECT. War in Ukraine: kyiv claims to have repelled an attack near Blahodatne, which Wagner says he controls

Kaja Kallas, the Estonian Prime Minister has criticized the Olympic Committee which wants to lift the ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. She called the move “politically and morally wrong.”

A hospital in Kherson came under fire, according to the Ministry of Health. “The Kherson Regional Clinical Hospital came under fire. A nurse was injured, ”says this source.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaia Kallas came to help make camouflage nets for the Ukrainian army with women from the Estonian town of Saue, located not far from Tallinn.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he is open to contact with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. However, no phone call is planned, according to the Kremlin spokesman to the official RIA Novosti news agency. Putin and Scholz last spoke by phone in early December. The Russian leader said at the time that the German and Western line on Ukraine was “destructive” and called on Berlin to rethink its approach.

The Ukrainian army said on Sunday that it repelled an attack near the village of Blahodatne located in the Donestk region (eastern Ukraine), while the private Russian paramilitary group Wagner claimed to have taken control.

kyiv troops “repelled attacks near (…) Blahodatne” and thirteen other localities in the Donestk region, assured the Ukrainian general staff in its daily press release.

But the Wagner group had announced a little earlier that its units had taken control of this village.

“Wagner PMC units took Blahodatne. Blahodatne is under our control,” said Evguéni Prigojine, leader of the paramilitary group, quoted by his press service.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has not confirmed at this stage.

According to the Ukrainian national police, the Russians killed two men aged 33 and 36, and a 70-year-old pensioner, this morning during a bombardment.

These Ukrainian soldiers will train on Challenger 2 tanks.

In 2023, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense will spend about 500 million euros for the purchase of unmanned aircraft. 16 contracts were signed with national manufacturers.

To meet strong demand in Ukraine and the West, German arms maker Rheinmetall has said it is ready to increase its production of tank and artillery ammunition. According to Reuters, it could start producing HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in Germany. “We can produce 240,000 rounds of tank ammunition (120mm) per year, which is more than the whole world needs,” his boss said.

Rheinmetall is also said to be in talks with Lockheed Martin, the American company that manufactures the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) multiple rocket launchers widely used by Ukrainian troops.

According to the Ukrainian army, fifteen Russian warships are stationed in the Black Sea, including three missile carriers equipped with around twenty Kalibr type cruise missiles. They are even more numerous in the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, according to the Ukrainian military, Russia continues to violate the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS 1974) by disabling Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) on civilian vessels in the sea. Azov.

The recently adopted ban on leaving the country of Ukrainian civil servants, in addition to business trips, now applies to men and women, who are unfit for military service, announced Andriy Demchenko, spokesman for the Service border national.

US military officials, according to Politico, have asked the Pentagon to supply Ukraine with F-16 jets so that the country is better able to defend itself against Russian missiles and drones. According to the site, no decision has been made and discussions are expected to last several weeks.

According to the European Commission, Moscow is spreading disinformation in an attempt to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine. The website https://euvsdisinfo.eu contradicts the Kremlin’s arguments.

Work in a damaged thermal power plant is underway. This partly explains the decline in electricity production according to the Ukrainian energy supplier.

Despite the announcement of the supply of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to continue to dialogue with Vladimir Putin. “I will also be on the phone with Putin again because it is necessary to talk to each other,” he said, adding that it was up to Putin to withdraw the troops from Ukraine and end this “terrible war and absurd”.

In December 1917, the government of Soviet Russia launched open aggression against the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR), which had just declared its independence. The Battle of Kruty took place on January 29, 1918, between Nizhyn and Bakhmach in the Chernihiv region, 130 kilometers northeast of kyiv. Two days earlier, students from the University of Ukraine had arrived as reinforcements. Faced with the Russian onslaught, the Ukrainians had been forced to withdraw. But later, a group of 27 students returned to Kruty station to sabotage the tracks. These twenty-seven students were captured and shot. The youngest of the missing was 16 years old.

To block Moscow and Minsk’s connections to his country, President Zelensky imposed new sanctions on companies and three individuals. “Their assets in Ukraine are blocked, their properties will be used for our defense,” Zelenskiy said in his final video address. The sanctioned companies are mainly engaged in cargo transportation, vehicle rental and chemical production, according to the list published by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. The list includes fertilizer producers, Belarusian railways or transport rental companies.

According to the American War Institute, Russian regular forces are replacing mercenaries around Bakhmout. “The Wagner Group forces in Bakhmout have made no significant gains since the capture of Soledar around January 12. Conventional Russian units are now taking part in the fighting at Bakhmut to reinvigorate the Russian offensive there,” according to the ISW, adding that Wagner’s forces suffered heavy losses during the fighting.

In its latest daily update, the British Ministry of Defense returns to the plan to include military training in the Russian secondary school curriculum. According to the intelligence, this plan will include training with assault rifles and AK-series hand grenades, military drills and salutes as well as the use of personal protective equipment.

The newly elected President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel plans to visit Ukraine. During his campaign, Petr Pavel claimed that the Czech Republic would remain pro-Western and would maintain its strategic relations with the EU and NATO and would side with Ukraine. President Pavel is to meet with President Zelensky during the day. The date of his trip to Ukraine has not yet been set.

North Korea has issued a denial of Washington’s claims that the Pyongyang regime was supplying arms to Moscow. On January 20, White House Security Council spokesman John Kirby released US intelligence footage showing alleged Russian train cars from North Korea loaded with military equipment for the paramilitary group Wagner engaged in Ukraine. According to the official KCNA news agency, the director general of the North Korean American affairs department, Kwon Jong-un, dismissed this “trumpeted rumor” and warned the United States that they would expose themselves to a “truly undesirable result” if they continued to spread it.

In a speech in South Carolina, Donald Trump, the former President of the United States who launched his campaign for the presidential election of 2024 said: “We are on the verge of World War III”. According to him, we must find “a peace agreement now”. In his speech, he repeated that with him this conflict would never have happened. But also that he would only need 24 hours to find this peace agreement.

Located about 40 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, the town of Vouhledar has become a strategic point in the front line that the Russians are seeking to retake. The city has been under fire from more than 300 missiles and shells in the past 24 hours, according to spokesman for the Eastern Group of Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhii Cherevatyi.

A Russian strike killed at least three people and injured fourteen on Saturday in Konstantynivka, according to local Ukrainian authorities who had initially reported six injured. “The Russians fired on a residential area, damaging four-storey buildings, a hotel, garages and vehicles,” said the regional governor of Donetsk.

On Saturday morning, “the Ukrainian armed forces purposely hit the local hospital building with Himars rocket launchers” in the locality of Novoaidar, in the Lugansk region, the Russian army said yesterday in a press release. The strike “leaved 14 patients and medical personnel dead and 24 injured”, she said.

And welcome to this direct dedicated to the war in Ukraine.