live blog
According to a media report, the British government is planning to classify the Wagner mercenary group as a terrorist organization. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba is dampening expectations of a possible offensive. All developments in the live blog.
According to official information, two drones have apparently attacked a Russian military base in the western Russian region of Voronezh, not far from Ukraine. The attack was repelled, wrote the local governor Alexander Gusev on his telegram channel. “One was thrown off course by (anti-aircraft) action and crashed, the other was destroyed by shelling.” There is still heightened alert, he added. Several media reported that more than ten Russian soldiers were injured in the attack. There was initially no official confirmation of this.
conflicting parties as a source
Information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body in the current situation.
According to British intelligence experts, yesterday’s “Victory Day” parade over Nazi Germany in Moscow highlighted the material and strategic challenges facing the Russian military. Of the thousands of military personnel who took part in the parade, most were members of auxiliaries, paramilitaries and cadets, according to the daily intelligence report from the Ministry of Defense in London. The only regular troops ready for action were contingents of railroad troops and military police.
According to the British, there was another reason why Russia largely refrained from displaying tanks. “Despite heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia could have mustered more armored vehicles,” the British said. It is therefore likely that the Russian authorities wanted to avoid accusations from their own side, prioritizing parades over military operations.
According to the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, air force forces shot down an “enemy” drone. Falling debris damaged a gas pipeline and a house, regional governor Roman Starowoyt wrote on Telegram, according to the Reuters news agency. “The rubble fell in the village of Tolmachevo. No one was injured.” The region borders on neighboring Ukraine.
conflicting parties as a source
Information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body in the current situation.
According to the US government, Ukraine has all the necessary resources to recapture areas occupied by Russia in a counter-offensive. “They have everything they need to be successful in retaking territory that Russia has seized by force over the past 14 months,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference with his British counterpart James Cleverly in Washington .
The US government had previously announced additional military support for Ukraine worth 1.2 billion US dollars (around 1.1 billion euros). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi expressly welcomed the new aid package.
According to General Inspector Carsten Breuer, Ukraine is making progress with preparations for an offensive against Russian attackers. “It was explained to me how the front-line battle is being fought. The ground is still muddy and damp. There are still large lakes in some of the fields. The conditions for a comprehensive offensive have not yet been in place in recent weeks,” said Breuer the dpa news agency.
In all the talks, however, it had become clear to him “that plans for the Ukrainian offensive are underway.” The highest-ranking German soldier was in Ukraine last week, where he met army chief Valery Saluschny and Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov.
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is attending a cabinet meeting of the French government today. Before that, she meets her counterpart Catherine Colonna. It should also be about joint support for Ukraine.
According to a media report, Great Britain wants to formally classify the Russian mercenary group Wagner as a terrorist organization. This is intended to increase the pressure on Russia, reports the British daily The Times.
After the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also warned against overly high expectations of the Ukrainian army’s planned spring offensive. “Don’t think of this counter-offensive as the last, because we don’t know what will come of it,” he told the “Bild” newspaper. Only if this offensive succeeds in liberating the areas occupied by Russia will it be the last.
Kuleba emphasized that Ukraine needs significantly more armaments for its fight against the Russian occupying forces. “Because to win the war you need guns, guns and more guns,” he said. Much depends on Germany, which, with the armaments group Rheinmetall, has “a kind of titan of the armaments industry in Europe and probably in the world”.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warns against too high expectations with regard to the planned spring offensive.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has rejected hopes of an early end to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Russia is “not ready at the moment to withdraw from the occupied territories,” he said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper “El País”. “And I believe that Ukraine has hope to recapture it.”