WAR IN UKRAINE: January 21, 2023
Krasnogorivka, Donetsk Oblast. The man is carrying his neighbour to a burial site because no funeral services work (Ukrainska Pravda)
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 332
Germany failed to reach an agreement with its key Western allies on sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, despite growing pressure to step up its military aid and pleas from Kyiv for more weapons. The US and Germany appear to be in a standoff over sending the German-made tanks to Kyiv. Germany’s defense minister said Friday at a high-stakes defense meeting of allies that no decision about the tanks has been made - CNN
Late Friday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Zbigniew Rau, tweeted: “Arming Ukraine in order to repel the Russian aggression is not some kind of decision-making exercise. Ukrainian blood is shed for real. This is the price of hesitation over Leopard deliveries. We need action, now.”
U.S. Defence Secretary said at the NATO meeting he hosted in Germany: “This is a decisive moment for Ukraine in a decisive decade for the world…We will support Ukraine’s self defence for as long as it takes. Russia is re-grouping, recruiting, re-equipping. This is not a moment to slow down, it’s a time to dig deeper.”
Nationwide air raid alerts were triggered in Ukraine yesterday. In the morning, three Russian missile strikes damaged infrastructure - including a kindergarten - in Kramatorsk in the eastern part of the country. At least one person died.
Spiegel: German intelligence alarmed by high losses of Ukrainian army in Bakhmut. According to Der Spiegel, during a secret meeting held this week in the Bundestag, the foreign intelligence service informed security politicians that Ukraine is losing a "three-digit number of soldiers" daily. The report doesn't specify how the losses are counted and do they include wounded and captured.
Switzerland will return millions of stolen dollars to sanctioned Russians accused of taking part in one of the world’s most notorious frauds, according to a court order seen by The Daily Beast. The Swiss authorities have rejected an appeal against the decision to send back the stolen loot despite the knowledge that their investigation into the crime was corrupted by a Russian influence operation orchestrated by the notorious Trump Tower lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
A U.N. spokesperson said a three-truck convoy brought aid to around 800 people close to Soledar in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Friday, the first such delivery to the area by the global body as it seeks to step up front-line aid in the war. The supplies of food, water, hygiene and medicines were being offloaded on Friday morning in areas controlled by the Ukrainian government, Jens Laerke from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. He did not give an exact location, in an area that has been subject to intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, but said the vehicles departed from Dnipro. “People there are in dire need of aid so we are indeed happy this convoy has reached (them),” Laerke added - Reuters
U.S. designates Russia’s Wagner Group as a “trans-national criminal organization” and places sanctions on it. Releases satellite images purportedly showing transfer of weapons from N. Korea to Russia. That means both Pyongyang and Tehran are now supplying Moscow with weapons for its war in Ukraine. The White House says about 90% of Wagner deaths in Ukraine were ex-convicts - an extraordinary figure by any standard.
