Stoltenberg: We are seeing start of Russian offensive already
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, says “the reality is that we are seeing the start already” of a new Russian offensive in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin is sending “thousands and thousands more troops”, accepting “a very high rate of casualties” and taking “big losses” but putting pressure on the Ukrainians, he says.
“What Russia lacks in quality, they try to compensate in quantity,” he says, which he says highlights how urgent it is for the west to supply Ukraine with more weapons.
The faster Kyiv can be supplied with weapons, ammunition and spare parts, fuel, the more lives can be saved, he says.
Russia may have lost an entire brigade of the elite 155th naval infantry while storming the eastern Ukrainian city of Vuhledar, according to a report. A “large number” of Russian forces, including the command staff, were “destroyed” near the cities of Vuhledar and Mariinka in Donetsk, a Ukrainian official, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, said. Russian forces were also losing 150-300 marines a day near Vuhledar, he said. He estimated the brigade to have comprised about 5,000 soldiers in all, whose members had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed leader of Chechnya, has said Moscow will achieve its goals in Ukraine by the end of the year. In an interview broadcast on Russian state television, Kadyrov said Russia had the forces to take Kyiv and that it needed to capture Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and its main port, Odesa. Kadyrov’s forces have played a prominent role fighting in Ukraine, and he has formed an informal alliance with the head of the Russian mercenary Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and other nationalist hardliners who back the war.
Russia has claimed its troops have advanced 2km (1.24 miles) to the west in four days along the frontline in Ukraine. The Russian state-owned news agency Interfax carried a report on Monday citing a statement from the commander of the central military district saying: “Russian servicemen broke the enemy’s resistance and advanced several kilometres deeper into its echeloned defence. In four days the front moved 2 kilometres to the west. The enemy is very actively mining the territories that he leaves. It becomes problematic for both equipment and personnel to advance.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner group, said the mercenary force had taken the village of Krasna Hora, on the northern edge of the embattled city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. He published a short video apparently showing Wagner fighters next to the entrance sign to the village. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US thinktank, said geolocated footage showed Russian forces had captured at least part of the village of Krasna Hora and Ukrainians had probably withdrawn.
A Ukrainian official disputed Russian claims that it had captured Krasna Hora. The claim “is not true”, according to Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian armed forces. “There are ongoing battles there. We are keeping it under our control,” he said.
Ukrainian forces began training on Monday in operating Leopard 2 tanks in Germany, in a programme that will last until the beginning of April. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has announced that the tanks should arrive in Ukraine by the end of March.
One person was killed overnight after Russia shelled Kherson, and damage to train infrastructure prevented trains from Kyiv and Lviv reaching the city today. Five areas of Kherson were shelled overnight, and trains were forced to terminate at Mykolaiv, with passengers transferring by bus to reach Kherson, after tracks were damaged.
Russia has said it would be “inappropriate” to extend the Black Sea grain deal unless sanctions affecting its agricultural exports are lifted. The UN-brokered deal, which allows Russian and Ukrainian wheat and fertilisers to be exported through the Black Sea, is up for renewal again next month. Russia has signalled that it is unhappy with some aspects of the deal, since in its view it was being implemented unfairly because of sanctions on Russian agricultural exports.
Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, has accused Russia of planning to use foreign saboteurs to overthrow her country’s government, prevent it from joining the EU and use it in the war against Ukraine. Sandu’s comments on Monday came after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said last week that his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services “for the destruction of Moldova” – claims that were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials.
Norway’s intelligence service has said Russia is the main security threat for Norway and Europe. The deputy head of the foreign Norwegian intelligence service, Lars Nordrum, said Norway’s oil and gas installations could be targeted by Russian sabotage. It comes after the Norwegian government received the annual threat assessments from Norway’s three security services.
Ukraine has accused Silvio Berlusconi of “kissing Putin’s bloody hands” after Italy’s former prime minister blamed Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion of the country. In comments that unleashed a wave of criticism, Berlusconi said if the Ukrainian president had “stopped attacking the two autonomous republics of the Donbas” then “this would not have happened”.
Russian arms supplies to India have been worth $13bn in the past five years, and India has placed orders with Russia for weapons and military equipment exceeding $10bn, according to Russian state media. India is the world’s biggest buyer of Russian arms, accounting for about 20% of Moscow’s current order book. India has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its prime minister, Narendra Modi, has called for dialogue and diplomacy to solve the conflict.
An unverified video is being circulated on social media that appears to show the murder with a sledgehammer of a former Russian mercenary who fled the Wagner group while fighting in Ukraine. The clip is similar to one that showed the killing of another Wagner fighter, Yevgeny Nuzhin, in November last year.
A security guard spying for Russia at the British embassy in Berlin collected highly sensitive information for more than three years, a London court has heard. David Ballantyne Smith, 58, was arrested in August 2021 a day after meeting “Irina”, an MI5 officer posing as a member of Russia’s military intelligence service. The prosecution has argued that Smith, who had expressed “anti-west and anti-Nato views”, as well as his support for Vladimir Putin, had a “clear intention to cause prejudice to the UK”.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, for a new defence package and discussed “further cooperation” in a phone call, Zelenskiy said.
He said Norway’s new defence package for Kyiv “will strengthen us on land, in the sky and at sea”.
Had a phone call with 🇳🇴 PM @jonasgahrstore. Thanked for the new defense package that will strengthen us on land, in the sky & at sea. I’m also grateful for a significant 5-year aid package being prepared for approval in 🇳🇴. We discussed further cooperation. Victorious together!
Støre proposed last week that his country should provide about 75bn crowns (£6.1bn) in aid to Ukraine over five years.
In 2023, half the assistance would fund military needs while the rest would cover humanitarian aid, although this split could change in coming years, he said.
Norway has earned billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war as energy prices have tripled sincethe invasion of Ukraine and Norway has replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas.
A security guard spying for Russia at the British embassy in Berlin collected highly sensitive information for more than three years, including “secret” government communications with Boris Johnson, a London court has heard.
David Ballantyne Smith, 58, a Briton, who has pleaded guilty to eight charges, is alleged to have collected information from as early as March 2018 until his arrest in August 2021.
He was arrested a day after meeting “Irina”, an MI5 officer posing as a member of Russia’s military intelligence service.
Alison Morgan, prosecuting, told London’s Old Bailey that a search of Smith’s home in Potsdam, Germany, after his arrest recovered a USB stick which contained several photos of embassy staff and diplomatic passports.
Smith had filmed a number of sensitive documents he found in trays including a November 2020 letter from the then trade minister, Liz Truss, and then business minister, Alok Sharma, to the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, which was classified as “secret”, she said.
Smith had also sent a letter containing “highly sensitive information about the British embassy and those who worked within it” to Gen Maj Sergey Chukhrov, the Russian military attache to Berlin, in November 2020, she said.
Smith pleaded guilty in November to eight offences under the Official Secrets Act, including one charge relating to passing information to Chukhrov. He has admitted seven other charges relating to collecting information that might be useful to the Russian state.
He denies intending to cause prejudice to Britain, Morgan told the court, and says he pleaded guilty on the basis that he simply wanted to cause “inconvenience and embarrassment”. He also denies receiving any payment.
The prosecution has argued that Smith, who had expressed “anti-west and anti-Nato views”, as well as his support for Vladimir Putin, had a “clear intention to cause prejudice to the UK”.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said she expects all Nato members, including Turkey and Hungary, to ratify Finland and Sweden’s bids to join the alliance “without further delay”.
The accession of Finland and Sweden to Nato would strengthen the alliance as a whole, Baerbock told a news conference in Helsinki with her Finnish counterpart, Pekka Haavisto.
Annalena Baerbock and Pekka Haavisto in Helsinki. Photograph: Thomas Koehler/Photothek/Getty Images
The two Nordic countries sought Nato membership shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year and have said they want to join “hand in hand”, but while most member states have given the applications the green light, Turkey and Hungary are yet to ratify them.
Turkey has said it could approve Finland’s membership application ahead of Sweden’s, but Ankara wants Stockholm to take a tougher line against the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which is considered a terror group by Turkey and the EU, and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, and defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, met Polish and foreign instructors intensively training Ukrainian troops to operate German-made Leopard 2 tanks.
Duda and Błaszczak also watched Leopard 2 training at a military base and test range in Świętoszów, in south-west Poland, AP reports.
Ukrainian tank crews from units fighting in the east of the country are being trained up to 10 hours a day, including weekends, the Polish military said. Training is also being held in Germany.
Polish and Ukrainian soldiers train on a Leopard 2 tank at the Świętoszów military base. Photograph: Wojtek Radwański/AFP/Getty Images
Duda said he hoped the German-made tanks, which some European countries and Canada have offered Ukraine, would help Ukrainian forces “in a much efficient way to defeat the enemy”.
He said the Ukrainian trainees have come straight from the frontline.
You can see in their faces that these people have gone through terrible things, but they are determined to defend their homeland.
Polish defence minister Mariusz Błaszczak (L) and President Andrzej Duda arrive for a meeting with instructors who train Ukrainian soldiers on Leopard 2 tanks at the Świętoszów military base. Photograph: Wojtek Radwański/AFP/Getty Images
Germany has pledged at least 178 Leopard 1 tanks and 14 Leopard 2 tanks. Poland has pledged 14 Leopard 2s as well as more than 300 of its Soviet-era T-72 tanks and modernized PT-91 tanks.
Ukrainian official disputes Russia's claim of capturing village near Bakhmut
A Ukrainian official has disputed Russian claims that it captured the village of Krasna Hora near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
The claim that Russian troops have taken Krasna Hora “is not true”, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian armed forces.
He told CNN:
There are ongoing battles there. We are keeping it under our control.
Bakhmut remains the focus of Russia’s main attacks, Cherevatyi said, adding that Russian troops had the ability to fire on the routes to Bakhmut. Ukraine’s forces “are engaged in counter-battery fighting to reduce it”, he said.
Russia may have lost an entire brigade of the elite 155th naval infantry while storming the eastern Ukrainian city of Vuhledar, according to a report. A “large number” of Russian forces, including the command staff, were “destroyed” near the cities of Vuhledar and Mariinka in Donetsk, a Ukrainian official, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, said. Russian forces were also losing 150-300 marines a day near Vuhledar, he said. He estimated the brigade to have comprised about 5,000 soldiers in all, whose members had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed leader of Chechnya, has said Moscow will achieve its goals in Ukraine by the end of the year. In an interview broadcast on Russian state television, Kadyrov said Russia had the forces to take the capital Kyiv and that it needed to capture Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv and its main port, Odesa. Kadyrov’s forces have played a prominent role fighting in Ukraine, and he has formed an informal alliance with the head of the Russian mercenary Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and other nationalist hardliners who back the war.
Russia has claimed its troops have advanced 2km (1.24 miles) to the west in four days along the frontline in Ukraine. Russian state-owned news agency Interfax carried a report on Monday citing a statement from the commander of the central military district saying “Russian servicemen broke the enemy’s resistance and advanced several kilometres deeper into its echeloned defence. In four days the front moved 2 kilometres to the west. The enemy is very actively mining the territories that he leaves. It becomes problematic for both equipment and personnel to advance.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner group, said the mercenary force had taken the village of Krasna Hora, on the northern edge of the embattled city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. He published a short video, apparently showing Wagner fighters next to the entrance sign to the village. US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said geolocated footage showed Russian forces had captured at least part of the village of Krasna Hora and the Ukrainians had likely withdrawn from.
Ukrainian forces began training on Monday in operating Leopard 2 tanks in Germany, in a programme that will last until the beginning of April. German defence minister Boris Pistorius has announced that the tanks should arrive in Ukraine by the end of March.
One person has been killed overnight after Russia shelled Kherson, and damage to train infrastructure has prevented trains from Kyiv and Lviv reaching the city today. Five areas of Kherson were shelled overnight, and trains were forced to terminate at Mykolaiv and passengers transfer by bus to reach Kherson after tracks were damaged.
Russia has said it would be “inappropriate” to extend the Black Sea grain deal unless sanctions affecting its agricultural exports are lifted. The UN-brokered deal, which allows Russian and Ukrainian wheat and fertilisers to be exported through the Black Sea, is up for renewal again next month. Russia has signalled that it is unhappy with some aspects of the deal, since in its view it was being implemented unfairly because of sanctions on Russian agricultural exports.
Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, has accused Russia of planning to use foreign saboteurs to overthrow her country’s government, prevent it from joining the EU and use it in the war against Ukraine. Sandu’s comments on Monday came after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said last week that his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services “for the destruction of Moldova” – claims that were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials.
Norway’s intelligence service has said Russia is the main security threat for Norway and Europe. The deputy head of the foreign Norwegian intelligence service Lars Nordrum said Norway’s oil and gas installations could be targeted by Russian sabotage. It comes after the Norwegian government received the annual threat assessments from Norway’s three security services.
Ukraine has accused Silvio Berlusconi of “kissing Putin’s bloody hands” after Italy’s three-time former prime minister blamed Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion of the country. In comments that unleashed a wave of criticism, Berlusconi said if the Ukrainian president had “stopped attacking the two autonomous republics of the Donbas” then “this would not have happened”.
Russian arms supplies to India have been worth $13bn in the past five years, and India has placed orders with Russia for weapons and military equipment exceeding $10bn, according to Russian state media. India is the world’s biggest buyer of Russian arms, accounting for about 20% of Moscow’s current order book. India has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its prime minister, Narendra Modi, has called for dialogue and diplomacy to solve the conflict.
An unverified video is being circulated on social media which appears to show the murder with a sledgehammer of a former Russian mercenary who fled the Wagner mercenary group while fighting in Ukraine, in a clip similar to that which showed the killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin in November last year.
Good afternoon from London, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong here with all the latest from the Russia-Ukraine war. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.
Russia has said it would be “inappropriate” to extend the Black Sea grain deal unless sanctions affecting its agricultural exports are lifted.
The UN-brokered deal, which allows Russian and Ukrainian wheat and fertilisers to be exported through the Black Sea, was extended by a further 120 days in November and is up for renewal again next month.
Russia has signalled that it is unhappy with some aspects of the deal, since in its view it was being implemented unfairly because of sanctions on Russian agricultural exports. Moscow briefly suspended the deal in October.
In an interview with the RTVI broadcaster, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin said:
Without tangible results on the implementation of the Russia-UN Memorandum, above all on the real removal of sanctions restrictions on Russian agricultural exports ... the extension of the Ukrainian document is inappropriate.
Last week, Vershinin’s colleague, Alexander Grushko, said work to unblock Russian exports under the Black Sea grain deal was unsatisfactory, and accused the EU of failing to deliver on its promises.
Russia’s agricultural exports have not been explicitly targeted by western sanctions, but Moscow says blocks on its payments, logistics and insurance industries are a “barrier” to it being able to export its own grains and fertilisers.
Norway’s intelligence service has said Russia is the main security threat for Norway and Europe.
“Russia today poses the biggest threat to Norwegian and European security, and the confrontation with the west will be long lasting,” said defence minister, Bjørn Arild Gram. Gram made the remark after the government received the annual threat assessments from Norway’s three security services.
Norwegian justice minister Emilie Enger Mehl (L) and defence minister Bjorn Arild Gram at a news conference today at Marmorhallen on the country’s threat and risk assessments in Oslo. Photograph: NTB/Reuters
Associated Press reports that the deputy head of the foreign Norwegian intelligence service Lars Nordrum said that Norway’s oil and gas installations could be targeted by Russian sabotage. “Norway is now Europe’s most important energy supplier after Russia ended its gas exports to the west,” said Nordrum.
National security authority head Sofie Nystrøm warned that “all of Europe will suffer” if Norwegian gas and oil installations were hit.
But the domestic security service assessed that it’s unlikely Russia would carry out any sabotage operation on Norwegian soil this year.
The Russian state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that today Russia has launched an automated system called Oculus to detect internet content which breaches Russia’s law. Tass reports:
The system recognises images and symbols, illegal scenes and actions, analyses text in photo and video materials. Oculus automatically detects such offences as extremist themes, calls for mass illegal events, suicide, pro-drug content, LGBT propaganda and more.
In general, the creation of the system is a response to provocations and anti-Russian actions on the part of foreign resources. In 2022 alone, based on the data of the prosecutor general’s office of the Russian Federation, 102,627 online resources with fakes were removed and blocked, including those about the course of a special military operation in Ukraine.
Tass claims that usually an agent can manually check 106 images and 101 videos a day, but the Russian government agency deploying the system says it will check more than 200,000 images a day.
Russian courts have frequently imposed fines on western internet media companies over the last year for hosting what they claim is fake content about Ukraine.
Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports on Telegram that Ukrainian forces began training today in operating Leopard 2 tanks in Germany, in a programme that will last until the beginning of April.
German defence minister Boris Pistorius has announced that the tanks should arrive in Ukraine by the end of March.
Reuters reports the foreign affairs ministry in France said on Monday it “strongly” advised its citizens against going to Belarus giving the “new offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine”.
Earlier today the US told its citizens to leave Russia immediately due to the war in Ukraine and the risk of arbitrary arrest or harassment by Russian law enforcement agencies.
Agence France-Presse have a little more of those quotes from Jens Stoltenberg earlier about concerns over munitions production to supply Nato. [See 12.16 GMT]
The Nato secretary general said the alliance needs “to ramp up production” of ammunition as Ukraine’s rate of usage is far outstripping current capacities and draining stockpiles.
“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting allied stockpiles,” Stoltenberg told journalists.
“The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defence industries under strain.”
Stoltenberg admitted that Nato was facing a “problem” as current waiting times for large-calibre ammunition have grown from 12 to 28 months.
But he insisted he was confident steps taken so far meant Nato members were “on the path that will enable us both to continue to support Ukraine, but also to replenish our own stocks”.
