WAR IN UKRAINE: February 15, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 357
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed the need for providing Ukraine with more ammunition and completing pledged deliveries of tanks and other heavy equipment as NATO defense ministers and defense officials from a U.S.-led group of Ukrainian allies gathered for meetings Tuesday in Brussels. Stoltenberg told reporters the talks come at a critical time, and that allies would on Tuesday "address the urgent needs for increased support to Ukraine…Next week, we mark the first year of the terrible war in Ukraine, the full-fledged invasion by Russia against Ukraine," Stoltenberg said. "And we see no signs that President Putin is preparing for peace. What we see is the opposite — he is preparing for more war, for new offensives and new attacks." Stoltenberg said the prospect of allies providing fighter aircraft to Ukraine "is not the most urgent issue now, but it is an ongoing discussion." He also said discussions about military aid are not only about providing Ukraine with systems it does not have yet, but also about ensuring the ones it does have are working as they should. "This has become a grinding war of attrition, and therefore it's also a battle of logistics and this is a huge effort by allies to actually be able to get in the ammunition, the fuel, the spare parts which are needed," Stoltenberg said - VOA
Elon Musk says his decision to restrict Ukrainian access to his communications technology—he’s disabling satellite broadband use for any potential strikes on Russian soil—could help prevent the conflict from spiraling into World War III - Fortune
Russian forces are carrying out air and ground offensives in eastern Ukraine near Bakhmut, Shakhtarsk, and other towns in the Donetsk region, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Tuesday. "The enemy continues to concentrate their main efforts at assaulting in the Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Shakhtarsk directions," the military said in one of its regular updates. "Enemy aircraft are actively operating." The General Staff also said Russian rockets hit civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk region in two separate attacks, resulting in several wounded civilians - CNN
The Russian government is operating an expansive network of dozens of camps where it has held thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of the war against Ukraine last year, according to a new report released Tuesday. The report contains disturbing new details about the extent of Moscow's efforts to relocate, re-educate, and sometimes militarily train or forcibly adopt out Ukrainian children -- actions that constitute war crimes and could provide evidence that Russia's actions amount to genocide, it says. The report found that more than 6,000 children — ranging in age from mere months old to 17 — have been in Russian custody at some point during the course of the nearly year-long war, although the "total number of children is not known and is likely significantly higher than 6,000." It identified 43 facilities that are a part of the network, which "stretches from one end of Russia to the other," including Russian-occupied Crimea, the "eastern Pacific Coast - closer to Alaska than it is to Moscow," and Siberia, Raymond said. "The primary purpose of the camps appears to be political reeducation," he said - CNN