German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russian President Vladimir Putin has never threatened him or Germany, following claims by Boris Johnson that Putin threatened the former U.K. prime minister with a missile strike.
“Putin didn’t threaten me or Germany” in the phone conversations the chancellor has had with the Russian leader, Scholz told German newspaper Bild in an interview published Sunday.
In a British documentary that aired last week, Johnson revealed that Putin threatened him in a long phone call in February 2022 just before Russia invaded Ukraine. “He said ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ — something like that,” Boris said in the documentary, referring to Putin.
Johnson said he took the Russian leader’s threat to be “playing along” with attempts to get him to negotiate over Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied any threat.
Pushed in the Bild interview on whether Scholz had also received similar threats during phone calls with the Russian leader, the chancellor said “no.”
In his phone calls with Putin, “I make it very clear to Putin that Russia has sole responsibility for the war,” Scholz said. “In our telephone conversations, our very different positions on the war in Ukraine become very clear,” he said.
The chancellor also denied that Germany’s decision to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine was a threat to Russia.
He said that Germany is delivering battle tanks to Ukraine, along with other allies including the U.S., so that Kyiv “can defend itself.”
“This joint approach prevents an escalation of the war,” Scholz said.
Scholz’s comments come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that “the situation is getting tougher” on the front lines of the war in the east of the country. Moscow is throwing in “more and more of its forces to break our defenses. Now, it is very difficult in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, near Lyman, and other directions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address late Saturday.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that Bakhmut “is increasingly isolated” following Russian advances in the area. “The two main roads into the city for Ukrainian defenders are likely now both threatened by direct fire, following the Russian advances,” the ministry said in a tweet.
As battles rage in eastern Ukraine, an early mediator between Russia and Ukraine at the start of the war — former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett who served for just six months last year — revealed that Putin early in the invasion had promised not to kill Zelenskyy. In an interview with the Associated Press published Sunday, Bennett said that during a visit to Moscow in March 2022 he asked Putin if the Kremlin was planning to try to kill the Ukrainian leader.
“He said ‘I won’t kill Zelenskyy.’ I then said to him ‘I have to understand that you’re giving me your word that you won’t kill Zelenskyy.’ He said ‘I’m not going to kill Zelenskyy,’” Bennett told the AP. Bennett said that after his meeting, he called Zelenskyy to inform him of Putin’s comments.
The Kremlin has previously denied Ukrainian claims that Russia intended to assassinate Zelenskyy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to veto a new law that strengthens punishment for wayward military personnel on Thursday, rejecting a petition signed by over 25,000 Ukrainians who argue it’s too harsh.
“The key to the combat capability of military units and ultimately of Ukraine’s victory, is compliance with military discipline,” Zelenskyy said in his written response to the petition.
Ukrainian soldiers have stunned the world with their resilience and battlefield successes, withstanding a year-long onslaught from Russian troops. But among Kyiv’s forces, made up largely of fresh recruits lacking previous military experience or training, some are struggling to cope. There are those who have rebelled against commanders’ orders, gotten drunk or misbehaved; others, running low on ammunition and morale, have fled for their lives, abandoning their positions.
Seeking to bring his forces into line, Zelenskyy in January signed into force a punitive law that introduces harsher punishment for deserters and wayward soldiers, and strips them of their right to appeal.
The law aims to standardize and toughen the repercussions for rule-breaking, improving discipline and the combat readiness of military units. Disobedience will be punishable by five to eight years in prison, rather than the previous two to seven; desertion or failure to appear for duty without a valid reason by up to 10 years. Threatening commanders, consuming alcohol, questioning orders and many other violations will also be dealt with more harshly, potentially with prison time; those who broke these rules in the past may have gotten away with a probation period or the docking of their combat pay.
Those who lobbied in favor of the new law, such as the Ukrainian Army General Staff, argue it will make discipline fairer: Previously, because courts adjudicated infractions on a case-by-case basis, some perpetrators were able to escape punishment for serious rule-breaking entirely, while others received harsher sentences for less significant violations, according to an explanatory note that accompanied the new law.
But soldiers, lawyers and human rights watchdogs have slammed the measures as an inappropriate and blunt instrument that won’t deal with the root causes of military indiscipline — and over 25,000 Ukrainians called on the president to veto the law altogether in a petition submitted to the president late last year.
The new punitive rules remove discretion and turn courts into a “calculator” for doling out punishment to soldiers, regardless of the reasons for their offenses, lawyer Anton Didenko argued in a column on Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.
“This law will have negative consequences for the protection of the rights of military personnel who are accused of committing a crime and will reduce the level of motivation during service,” an NGO, called the Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition, said in a statement. “This can carry risks both for the protection of human rights and for the defense capability of the state.”
Zelenskyy’s military commanders disagree, arguing the measures are necessary to hold firm in the face of Russia’s assault.
Ukraine’s armed forces have swelled to over a million soldiers in the past year | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
“The army is based on discipline. And if the gaps in the legislation do not ensure compliance, and refuseniks can pay a fine of up to 10 percent of combat pay or receive a punishment with probation, this is unfair,” argued the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi in a video in favor of the new rules.
Zelenskyy, in his response to the popular petition asking him to scrap the changes, agreed that disciplinary action against military personnel should take into account their individual circumstances, and promised that the cabinet of ministers would further consider how to improve the disciplinary mechanism — though he did not specify when this work might be done; nor suspend the law in the meantime.
Army of civilians
Ukraine’s armed forces have swelled rapidly to over a million soldiers in the year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 — up from 250,000 personnel.
The influx of hundreds of thousands of new recruits, whom Ukraine has had to equip and train while withstanding the barrage from Russia, has compromised the usual vetting process and meant some unsuitable soldiers have ended up in combat, Valerii Markus, the chief master sergeant of the 47th Separate Assault Brigade, told subordinates in a lecture about “desertion at the front,” posted to his YouTube channel in January.
“We were trying to vet the candidates as well as we could in those circumstances,” Markus said. “However, many people in our own brigade don’t want to be there.” He said some of those who had joined up for the wrong motivations, such as for a pay check, subsequently “break down under pressure and want to flee; start to revolt.”
Markus said commanders frequently didn’t understand the problems and shortages faced by their troops on the ground due to local sergeants failing to communicate with them. He played videos of soldiers complaining about a lack of weapons or inappropriate or illegal orders from their commanders, before telling those in the audience that most problems could be resolved internally through the proper channels, while publicly airing complaints discredited Ukraine’s army and undermined attempts to help troops.
“Do I recognize the existence of problems that lead to the arbitrary abandonment of positions? Yes,” Zaluzhnyi said in his video supporting the reforms. “Am I working on their elimination? Successful operations to liberate the territories of our state are a confirmation of that.”
But members of Ukraine’s armed forces, many of whom have expressed respect for Zaluzhnyi, were deeply disappointed by his support of the new law.
“It is very demotivating. This is such a striking contrast with Zaluzhnyi’s human- and leader-oriented ‘religion,’” said Eugenia Zakrevska, a human rights lawyer who enlisted in the war effort and is now a member of the 92nd Ivan Sirko Separate Mechanized Brigade. This was a pointed reference to an interview the commander-in-chief gave to the Economist in December, in which he said that unlike the Kremlin, the “religion” he and Ukraine practised was “to remain human in any situation.”
Treating the symptoms, not the disease
Those who oppose the new law argue that Ukraine needs to deal with the underlying causes of desertion and misbehavior, rather than punishing soldiers who break the rules more harshly.
A Ukrainian army officer who recently left the frontline city of Bakhmut (and requested anonymity as officers are not authorized to speak to the press) told POLITICO: “Sometimes abandonment of positions becomes the only way to save personnel from senseless death. If they cannot deliver ammunition or [relieve troops], when you sit in the trenches for several days without sleep or rest, your combat value goes to zero.”
In responding to the petition asking him to reconsider, President Zelenskyy agreed that disciplinary action should take into account the individual circumstances of military personnel | Yuriy Dyachyshyn/ AFP via Getty Images
The officer added that many discipline problems are rooted in ineffective or careless command, as well as the strain placed on Kyiv’s forces battling a far larger army of invaders, meaning they are not rotated as often as they ought to be.
“Fatigue and trauma lead to mental disorders, and bring chaos, negligence and even depravity into a soldier’s life. This strongly affects fighting qualities and obedience,” the officer said.
Zakrevska, from the Ivan Sirko brigade, said Ukrainian soldiers rarely abandon their positions — continuing to fight even when outnumbered and carrying significant casualties.
“Once, I had to call the command and ask for our sergeant to be ordered to go to the hospital — because he refused evacuation even though he was badly wounded,” Zakrevska said. “He stayed with us, although he could not get proper medical help as our doctor was also injured.”
It is only out of sheer desperation that soldiers leave their posts, Zakrevska argued, adding that to prevent desertion, commanders should rotate fighters more frequently. But she acknowledged that in many places, R&R for the troops is impossible due to a shortage of combat-capable fighters.
Most brigades are full, Zakrevska said — but some of those in them aren’t fit to fight, and “it is impossible to fire them. Because no one can be fired from the army at all. Only after a verdict in a criminal case. Such a system also greatly undermines morale. Because it turns service in the army from an honorable duty into a punishment.”
“In the situations of despair and complete exhaustion, fear of criminal liability does not work,” Zakrevska argued.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov- IANS
Moscow: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov met with new US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy, who presented copies of her credentials.
During the conversation with Tracy on the sharply worsened Russia-US relations, Ryabkov pointed out the counterproductiveness of Washington’s confrontational policy, which is “fraught with serious negative consequences,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The Russian side hopes that the US envoy will strictly abide by Russian laws, observe norms and customs, adhere to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the host country, Xinhua news agency reported.
Sworn in on January 9, Tracy is the first woman to occupy the post of US Ambassador to Russia.
“Ambassador Tracy begins her tenure in Moscow focused on maintaining dialogue between our capitals at a time of unprecedented tension,” the US embassy said in a statement on Monday.
Some Putin opponents go further. Gathering outside Warsaw this past November, a group of exiled politicians called the Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia declared that in addition to ending the occupation of Crimea and other Ukrainian territories, Russia must pay reparations to Ukraine — and give up war criminals for trials. (The Congress was led by Ilya Ponomarev, the only member of Russia’s parliament to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014; he’s now living in exile in Ukraine.)
The stakes could not be higher. Another exile organization, the Anti-War Conference of the Free Russia Forum organized by the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former political prisoner, has stated that the conflict is not regional, that Putin’s war is not just with Ukraine but with the liberal Western world order. It is a war over the “basic values” of Western democratic civilization.
Considering their importance to a Russian defeat and a successful outcome of the war, Russia’s political émigrés deserve our support. So far, they have been adept at self-organization and, for the most part, at self-financing. The West’s assistance is needed mostly in lowering or removing bureaucratic barriers. For instance, the U.S. and the EU should be faster at processing temporary year-long visas for political exiles who have found quick but impermanent refuge in countries like Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Turkey. A recent study by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, also suggests that Western consulates should be more efficient in issuing work permits and refugee identification papers. Germany and the Czech Republic have already begun designating special categories of immigration for such cases to expedite processing.
Yet the West should avoid arbitrating or taking sides in the inevitable internecine spats within the émigré community. The goal is an opposition that would as closely as possible reflect the diverse segments of the Russian political configuration that are today being flattened under the regime’s deadly weight. Herzen, again, shows the way in seeking to be as inclusive as possible and welcoming all those who were “not dead to human feelings” into “a single vast protest against the evil regime,” as Herzen’s biographer Isaiah Berlin put it.
Nor should the West impose political tests; there should be only two criteria for acceptance and support of the political émigrés. One is an unconditional affirmation of Russia’s borders as of January 1, 1992. The other is a broad, deep, persistent and patient de-Stalinization and de-imperialization of Russia — cultural, educational, historiographic. Of course, it would be up to the Russians themselves to decide on how to accomplish these mammoth tasks. We can only hope that, resuming where the sincere but fitful glasnost assault on totalitarianism and the Soviet empire left off, a future Russia that’s at peace with its own people and the world would systematically expunge the foundation of the house that Putin built: Russia as a providential power, a “Third Rome” with a special God-given mission in the world; the equation of greatness with fear and terror; the primacy of state over individual; and the cult of violence.
As in every modern mass migration, the civic-minded among the Russian immigrants — the human rights activists, bloggers, environmentalists and members of the political opposition — are a tiny minority: an estimated 10,000 men and women out of as many as 1.4 million who have left their country since the beginning of Putin’s third presidency in 2012. Yet the scale of their effort to edify and inspire has already by far exceeded their size.
“We have saved the honor of the Russian name,” Herzen wrote to his fellow self-exile, 19th century writer Ivan Turgenev. That, ultimately, is why Russia’s political émigrés deserve the West’s admiration and its help.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Moscow: The Latvian ambassador to Russia, Maris Riekstins, should leave Russia within two weeks, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Latvian Charge d’Affaires Dace Rutka was summoned to the Ministry in protest over Latvia’s decision to lower the level of Russian-Latvian diplomatic relations, the Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said on Monday his country recalled its ambassador from Russia and downgraded diplomatic relations with Russia to the level of charge d’affaires as of February 24. Rinkevics said the decision was made in a show of solidarity with its neighbour Estonia, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called Latvia’s justification of its decision completely unacceptable. It said that the only way the Baltic states had shown solidarity was through their “total Russophobia” and their efforts to promote hostility against Russia.
Needless to say, it didn’t work. While we were holding back, Russia was building up. The Minsk process ended when Russia unleashed a devastating total war of aggression on Ukraine at the end of February 2022.
That’s why the entire international community should carefully study the lessons of “Minsk” in order to restore international peace and security today and avoid falling into new Russian traps.
Here are five lessons we learned from negotiations with Russia.
Lesson #1: It’s a mistake to freeze the war and postpone the solution of territorial problems “for the future.”
The architects of Minsk believed that fixing the status quo and decreasing hostilities would be enough for the conflict to gradually ease. This belief, based on a false premise of Russia’s alleged willingness to compromise, led to a real disaster for Ukraine, the European order and the world.
In fact, from the inception of the Minsk agreements and throughout the Minsk process, Moscow was preparing for a full-scale war on Ukraine. While Russian representatives kept imitating diplomacy, the Kremlin was quietly building up its military forces and planning to destroy the democratic international order with a single devastating blow.
Lesson #2: Russia doesn’t negotiate in good faith.
The world saw Minsk as a platform for dialogue and a path to peace, while Russia saw it as an instrument to steadily pursue its aggressive goals and destroy Ukraine by means of political pressure and without the need to launch a full-scale invasion.
From the very onset, Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to dismantle Ukrainian statehood. If that was achievable by political and diplomatic means, fine, and he tried to use Minsk to erode Ukrainian sovereignty. But if that didn’t succeed, he planned all along to annihilate Ukraine by brute military force.
The Minsk agreements were doomed to fail for only one reason: The Russian regime never sought fair peace and fair play. Even on the eve of the full-scale invasion, Putin continued to lie straight into the faces of world leaders, denying plans to attack.
Deception lies at the core of Russia’s foreign policy and the way it treats international partners — both in Europe, Africa, Asia and other regions. Victims, weaklings, henchmen — this is whom Moscow prefers to see on the other side of the table.
Lesson #3: The de-occupation of Crimea can’t be set aside.
Western strategy to counter the Russian threat should have been based on decisive steps to de-occupy all Ukrainian territories as early as 2014.
Even now, when I say Ukraine aims to fully restore its territorial integrity, journalists sometimes decide to clarify: “Including Crimea?” This question is senseless and only reinforces the Russian narrative that Crimea is special. No, it’s not. Crimea goes without saying. One of the gravest mistakes of Minsk was to allow Russia to believe that the issue of Crimea was off the table.
There is no, and has never been any, difference between Crimea, Donbas, Kherson, Kyiv and other regions. Each of them is significant for the real protection of European and world security. When the West agreed to de facto close its eyes to Crimea’s annexation, it gave the green light to new Russian imperialist encroachments.
Lesson #4: Russia does not reciprocate with constructive language and policy.
How many times have we heard from Russian leaders that they were cheated or outwitted by others? But this is only a projection of their own goals, because for Russia, any victory is someone’s defeat. Putin’s Russia has been inventing complex combinations to deceive others, and not to find a common interest, even the most pragmatic one.
In Putin’s mind, any compromise is a weakness. This is why the only way to speak to him is in the language of strength. Today, Putin has made his final bet by deciding to proceed with a genocidal war of aggression on Ukraine at any cost. This means there is nothing to talk about with him anymore. He made his choice and must be defeated.
Lesson #5: Partners should force Russia, not Ukraine, into concessions.
In 2015, Ukraine still stood on shifting sands. We had just begun rebuilding our army, parts of our territories were occupied and the economy had just begun recovering from the shock of revolution and war. Russia had a powerful army, levers of energy pressure and networks of agents of influence.
Some of our partners thus tried to pressure Ukraine to be “constructive,” because we had more difficulty saying “no.”
Despite all the flaws of the Minsk process, Ukraine adhered to its obligations. Together with France and Germany, we sought a transparent settlement and a just peace. The Russian regime, in its turn, did not fulfill a single point of the Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 agreements.
Neither the first, a full cease-fire, nor the second, the withdrawal of all heavy weapons, nor any further points: the permission of OSCE monitoring, the all-for-all exchange of political prisoners and prisoners of war and establishing an international mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Since his election in 2019, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tried to turn the Minsk process around, drive it out of its dead end, despite all its flaws. Under his presidency, Ukraine held 88 rounds of negotiations with Russia. Efforts to find a transparent and honest solution fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin. Russians did not want a settlement, let alone a just peace. And Russia was cynical enough to demand from others that Moscow’s security “concerns” should be heard.
Now that the Kremlin failed to achieve the goals of its full-scale aggression, it’s now trying to outfox Ukraine and the international community. Russia’s latest statements hint at their wish to secure a new “Minsk” agreement, a new trap for the world. But what Russia really wants is a pause, not peace.
Any hypothetical “Minsk-3” can have only one result: an even bloodier war, which will affect not only Ukraine, but draw in the entire Euro-Atlantic space and the world as a whole. Repeating mistakes will not yield better results.
No other nation craves peace more than Ukraine. But we need a just and lasting peace which will prevent any new genocidal war against Ukrainians and other nations. That is why Zelenskyy proposed a Peace Formula with 10 specific steps covering the restoration of nuclear, food and energy security in the interests of the entire international community.
If the entire international community takes a strong, consolidated position, then Russia will have no other option but to stop its killing of Ukrainians and engage in real substantive negotiations. The united will of the world is key to effective diplomacy and achieving sustainable peace for many decades to come.
Furthermore, I believe that the voice of the West is not enough to solve the global security crisis triggered by Russia’s war and guarantee long-term international peace. We have reached a turning point when the position of the states of the Global South can help achieve this result. The fate of the diplomatic resolution of the war depends on the countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America stepping up and using their weight and influence. Every voice and every country is important, because in the U.N. charter there are no “big” and “small” states, influential and non-influential ones, champions or outsiders.
Those who sincerely seek peace should join the consolidated international efforts on implementing the Ukrainian Peace Formula. We designed it in a flexible way allowing states to commit only to those elements of the formula which they fully share and take leadership in certain specific areas of peacebuilding efforts without committing to the other ones.
The flaws of the Minsk process must not be repeated. In fact, they must serve as an example of how not to negotiate with Russia. In diplomatic language, “to minsk, minsking” has become shorthand to describe attempts to negotiate an end to a war which only brings the opposite result and allows an aggressor to launch an even bloodier and tougher aggression.
Therefore, my message today is simple. Don’t minsk Ukraine and the world again!
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Finland could reconsider its joint NATO bid with Sweden if Stockholm’s application is delayed further, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Tuesday, a day after Turkey said it would not support the Swedish candidacy.
“You have to assess the situation,” Haavisto told Finnish public broadcaster Yle. “Has something happened that the longer term would prevent the Swedish project from going ahead? It [is] too early to take a position on that.”
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO together last October, as a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and Hungary are the last two members of the military alliance who still need to ratify the joint bid.
While Budapest has pledged it would sign off the bid, Ankara is yet to follow suit.
But relations between Sweden and Turkey have taken a turn for the worse in recent days, after a far-right Swedish politician burned a copy of the Quran during a protest in Stockholm last Saturday.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the burning was an insult, and that Sweden would not receive “any support from [Turkey] on the NATO issue.”
Haavisto seemed more restrained in an interview to Reuters, also on Tuesday morning. When asked if Finland could join NATO on its own, the Foreign Minister said: “I do not see the need for a discussion about that.”
Haavisto also told Reuters the three-way talks between Finland, Sweden and Turkey on NATO accession would be paused “for a couple of weeks” until “the dust has settled after the current situation.”
“No conclusions should be drawn yet,” Haavisto added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BERLIN — Germany and its European partners plan to “quickly” send two Leopard 2 tank battalions to Ukraine — suggesting about 80 vehicles — the government in Berlin announced Wednesday, adding that Germany would provide one company of 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks “as a first step.”
Other countries likely to send Leopards to the war against Russia include Poland, Spain, Norway and Finland.
The decision by Chancellor Olaf Scholz — which emerged on Tuesday evening — marks a decisive moment in Western support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, which entered its 12th month this week and could soon heat up further as Moscow is expected to launch a new offensive.
Following Berlin’s move, other European countries like Spain and Norway reportedly agreed to join the Leopard tank alliance.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, welcomed the German announcement as a “first step.”
“Leopards are very much needed,” he said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy himself also welcomed the move on Twitter. “Sincerely grateful to the Chancellor and all our friends in” Germany, he said.
Russia’s Ambassador to Germany Sergei Nechaev said in a statement the decision was “extremely dangerous,” and took the conflict “to a new level of confrontation.”
Kyiv had long urged Germany and other partners to supply its army with the powerful German-built Leopard 2 tank, but Scholz hesitated to take the decision, partly out of concern that it could drag Germany or NATO into the conflict. He remained adamant that such a move had to be closely coordinated and replicated by Western allies, most notably the United States.
The news of an imminent announcement by U.S. President Joe Biden to send “a significant number” of American M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine facilitated the chancellor’s decision. Scholz had come under huge pressure from European partners like Poland, as well as his own coalition partners in government, to no longer block the delivery of the German tank. Since they are German-made, their re-export needed the approval of the German government.
“This decision follows our well-known line of supporting Ukraine to the best of our ability. We act internationally in a closely coordinated manner,” Scholz said in a written statement. He is also due to address the German parliament at 1 p.m. on Wednesday to further explain his decision.
“The goal is to quickly form two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine,” a German government spokesperson said.
“As a first step, Germany will provide a company of 14 Leopard-2 A6 tanks from Bundeswehr stocks. Other European partners will also hand over Leopard-2 tanks,” the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson also said the training of Ukrainian crews on the tanks “is to begin rapidly in Germany.” Berlin would also provide “logistics, ammunition and maintenance of the systems.”
Moreover, Germany will provide partner countries like Spain, Poland, Finland or Norway, which “want to quickly deliver Leopard-2 tanks from their stocks,” the necessary re-export permission, the spokesperson said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted that he “strongly welcomes” Berlin’s decision. “At a critical moment in Russia’s war, these can help Ukraine to defend itself, win & prevail as an independent nation.”
Spain, which owns one of the largest fleets of Leopards in the EU, with 347 tanks, has previously said it would send tanks to Kyiv as part of a European coalition, according to El País.
The Norwegian government is considering sending eight of its 36 Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but no decision has been made yet, Norwegian daily DN reported late Tuesday after a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense, quoting sources close to the deliberation.
Portugal, which has 37 Leopards, could provide four tanks to the assembling European coalition, a source close to the government told Correio da Manhã late on Tuesday.
The Netherlands, which is leasing 18 Leopards from Germany, is also weighing supplying some of their armored vehicles, Dutch newswire ANP reported, quoting a government spokesperson. On Tuesday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was “willing to consider” buying the tanks from Germany and shipping them to Ukraine, but that no decision had been made.
On Wednesday, the Swedish defense minister said that Sweden did not exclude sending some of its own tanks at a later stage, according to Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.
Wilhelmine Preussen and Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting.
This article was updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
When a major corruption scandal broke in Ukraine last weekend, reporters faced an excruciating dilemma between professional duty and patriotism. The first thought that came to my mind was: “Should I write about this for foreigners? Will it make them stop supporting us?”
There was no doubting the severity of the cases that were erupting into the public sphere. They cut to the heart of the war economy. In one instance, investigators were examining whether the deputy infrastructure minister had profited from a deal to supply electrical generators at an inflated price, while the defense ministry was being probed over an overpriced contract to supply food and catering services to the troops.
Huge stories, but in a sign of our life-or-death times in Ukraine, even my colleague Yuriy Nikolov, who got the scoop on the inflated military contract, admitted he had done everything he could not to publish his investigation. He took his findings to public officials hoping that they might be able to resolve the matter, before he finally felt compelled to run it on the ZN.UA website.
Getting a scoop that shocks your country, forces your government to start investigations and reform military procurement, and triggers the resignation of top officials is ordinarily something that makes other journalists jealous. But I fully understand how Nikolov feels about wanting to hold back when your nation is at war. Russia (and Ukraine’s other critics abroad) are, after all, looking to leap upon any opportunity to undermine trust in our authorities.
A journalist is meant to stay a little distant from the situation he or she covers. It helps to stay impartial and to stick to the facts, not emotions. But what if staying impartial is impossible as you have to cover the invasion of your own country? Naturally, you have to keep holding your government to account, but you are also painfully aware that the enemy is out there looking to exploit any opportunity to erode faith in the leadership and undermine national security.
That is exactly what Ukrainian journalists have to deal with every day. In the first six months of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and watchdogs decided to put their public criticism of the Ukrainian government on pause and focus on documenting Russian war crimes.
But that has backfired.
“This pause led to a rapid loss of accountability for many Ukrainian officials,” Mykhailo Tkach, one of Ukraine’s top investigative journalists, wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda.
His investigations about Ukrainian officials leaving the country during the war for lavish vacations in Europe led to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues. It also sparked the dismissal of the powerful deputy prosecutor general.
The Ukrainian government was forced to react to corruption and make a major reshuffle almost immediately. Would that happen if Ukrainian journalists decided to sit on their findings until victory? I doubt it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended up imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Is it still painful when you have to write about your own government’s officials’ flops when overwhelming enemy forces are trying to erase your nation from the planet, using every opportunity they can get to shake your international partners’ faith? Of course it is.
But in this case, there was definite room for optimism. Things are changing in Ukraine. The government had to react very quickly, under intense pressure from civil society and the independent press. Memes and social media posts immediately appeared, mocking the government’s pledge to buy eggs at massively inflated prices. Ultimately, the deputy infrastructure minister was fired and the deputy defense minister resigned.
This speedy response was praised by the European Commission and showed how far we really are from Russia, where authorities hunt down not the officials accused of corruption, but the journalists who report it.
As Tkach said, many believe that the war with the internal enemy will begin immediately after the victory over the external one.
However, we can’t really wait that long. It is important to understand that the sooner we win the battle with the internal enemy — high-profile corruption — the sooner we win the war against Russia.
“Destruction of corruption means getting additional funds for the defense capability of the country. And it means more military and civilian lives saved,” Tkach said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
It appears it’s only a matter of time before the Kremlin orders another draft to replenish its depleted ranks and make up for the battlefield failings of its command.
This week, Norway’s army chief said Russia has already suffered staggering losses, estimating 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since February — a figure much higher than American estimates, as General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, had suggested in November that the toll was around 100,000.
But whatever the exact tally, few military analysts doubt Russian forces are suffering catastrophic casualties. In a video posted this week, Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova, who heads the Russia Behind Bars charity, said that of the 50,000 conscripts recruited from jails by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s paramilitary mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, 40,000 are now dead, missing or deserted.
In some ways, the high Wagner toll isn’t surprising, with increasing reports from both sides of the front lines that Prigozhin has been using his recruits with little regard for their longevity. One American volunteer, who asked to remain unnamed, recently told POLITICO that he was amazed how Wagner commanders were just hurling their men at Ukrainian positions, only to have them gunned down for little gain.
Andrey Medvedev, a Wagner defector who recently fled to Norway, has also told reporters that in the months-long Russian offensive against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, former prisoners were thrown into battle as cannon fodder, as meat. “In my platoon, only three out of 30 men survived. We were then given more prisoners, and many of those died too,” he said.
Of course, Wagner is at the extreme end when it comes to carelessness with lives — but as Ukraine’s deadly New Year’s Day missile strike demonstrated, regular Russian armed forces are also knee-deep in blood. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed at Makiivka — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the invasion began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll was nearer 400.
Many of those killed there came from Samara, a city located at the confluence of the Volga and Samara rivers, where Communist dictator Joseph Stalin had an underground complex built for Russian leaders in case of a possible evacuation from Moscow. The bunker was built in just as much secrecy as the funerals that have been taking place over the past few weeks for the conscripts killed at Makiivka. “Lists [of the dead] will not be published,” Samara’s military commissar announced earlier this month.
To make up for these losses, Russia’s military bloggers, who have grown increasingly critical, have been urging a bigger partial mobilization, this time of 500,000 reservists to add to the 300,000 already called up in September. President Vladimir Putin has denied this, and Kremlin press spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also dismissed the possibility, saying that the “topic is constantly artificially activated both from abroad and from within the country.”
Yet, last month, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called for Russia’s army to be boosted from its current 1.1 million to 1.5 million, and he announced new commands in regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia, on the border with Finland.
Meanwhile, circumstantial evidence that another draft will be called is also accumulating — though whether it will be done openly or by stealth is unclear.
Along these lines, both the Kremlin and Russia’s political-military establishment have been redoubling propaganda efforts, attempting to shape a narrative that this war isn’t one of choice but of necessity, and that it amounts to an existential clash for the country.
General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” | Ruslan Braun/Creative commons via Flickr
In a recent interview, General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” and that course corrections are needed when it comes to mobilization. He talked about threats arising from Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Similarly, in his Epiphany address this month, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said, “the desire to defeat Russia today has taken very dangerous forms. We pray to the Lord that he will bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.” And the increasingly unhinged Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the war in Ukraine isn’t going as planned, so it might be necessary to use nuclear weapons to avoid failure.
As Russia’s leaders strive to sell their war as an existential crisis, they are mining ever deeper for tropes to heighten nationalist fervor too, citing the Great Patriotic War at every turn. At the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, which commemorates the breaking of the German siege of the city in 1944, a new exhibition dedicated to “The Lessons of Fascism Yet to Be Learned” is due to be unveiled, and it is set to feature captured Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles. “It’s only logical that a museum dedicated to the struggle against Nazism would support the special operation directed against neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” a press release helpfully suggests.
In line with Putin’s insistence that the war is being waged to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists have also been endeavoring to popularize the slogan, “We can do it again.”
At the same time, there are signs that local recruitment centers are gearing up for another surge of draftees as well.
Rumors of a fresh partial mobilization have prompted some dual-citizen Central Asian workers — those holding Russian passports and who would be eligible to be drafted — to leave the country, and some say they’ve been prevented from exiting. A Kyrgyz man told Radio Free Europe he was stopped by Russian border guards when he tried to cross into Kazakhstan en route to Kyrgyzstan. “Russian border guards explained to me quite politely that ‘you are included in a mobilization list, this is the law, and you have no right to go,’” he said.
In order to prevent another surge of refuseniks, Moscow also seems determined to put up further restrictions on crossing Russia’s borders, including possibly making it obligatory for Russians to book a specific time and place in advance, so that they can exit. Amendments to a transport law introduced in the Duma on Monday would require “vehicles belonging to Russian transport companies, foreign transport companies, citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, stateless persons and other road users” to reserve a date and time “in order to cross the state border of the Russian Federation.”
Transport officials say this would only affect haulers and would help ease congestion near border checkpoints. But if so, then why are “citizens of the Russian Federation” included in the language?
All in all, manpower will be crucial for Russia to mount a spring offensive in the coming months. And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers on the battlefield. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest are necessary for an attacking force.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
