Political strategic level
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ahead of what officials described as a summit today. The last such summit was held in Kiev in October 2021, a few months before the start of a large-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
Ms von der Leyen praised Ukraine's political move to apply for EU membership, although Brussels officials point out that Ukraine is a long way from joining the 27-nation bloc. Ms von der Leyen conveyed the Commission's message to Kyiv "to join the main European programmes, which will give Ukraine benefits in many areas close to those of EU membership".
Since the start of the Russian war, she said, EU support to Ukraine has reached €50 billion and the EU plans to adopt its 10th package of sanctions against Russia by 24 February. Ms von der Leyen also announced that an International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in Ukraine will be set up in The Hague to coordinate the collection of evidence of war crimes.
Von der Leyen, on her fourth visit to Kyiv since the Russian invasion, added that she was "comforted" by Ukraine's actions to fight corruption. Eradicating entrenched corruption is a key condition for EU accession. This week, Mr Zelensky twice targeted corrupt officials who were sacked.
In response to the EC President's visit to Ukraine, terrorist Russia again targeted residential areas in the eastern Ukrainian town of Kramatorsk with missiles. The latest strikes in Kramatorsk came as rescue teams were still searching for survivors of the first missile strike late on Wednesday, which killed at least three people and injured 21 others. The latest strikes by Russian terrorists hit residential buildings as well as a children's clinic and a school in the centre of the city, injuring at least five civilians. Kramatorsk is the main centre of the Ukrainian army in the east.
Over the past day, Russian shelling across Ukraine has killed at least eight civilians and wounded 29 others, according to the Office of the President of Ukraine. In addition to the casualties in Kramatorsk, four people who were sheltering from shelling in the north-eastern Chernihiv region were among those killed when a mortar shell from the Russian horde struck a cellar.
This is the response of the war criminals to the diplomatic support of European countries for Ukraine. Houses, schools, hospitals have been destroyed and civilians have been killed in exchange for tongue-lashing.
After months of wrangling, the US has agreed to send longer-range bombs to Ukraine, US officials said on Thursday, confirming that the range of the new weapons will be roughly double that of any other American-provided weapons.
The US will provide the small-diameter ground-based bombs as part of a $2.17 billion aid package to be announced on Friday, several US officials said. The package also includes, for the first time, equipment to link all the different air defence systems that the Western allies are rushing to the battlefield and integrate them into Ukraine's own air defences so that it can better defend itself against Russian missile attacks.
The number of small-diameter bombs with a range of about 150 km is not disclosed. The longest range of the missiles provided by the US for artillery so far is about 80 kilometres. Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikoff said on Thursday that the country was ready to give guarantees to its Western partners that their weapons would not be used to launch strikes on Russian territory, adding that Kyiv needed weapons with a range of up to 300 kilometres to dislodge Russian forces.
The US aid package includes $425 million for ammunition and support equipment, to be drawn from existing Pentagon stockpiles, and $1.75 billion in new funds under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is being used to buy new weapons from industry.
The assistance initiative will pay for the integration of a longer-range bomb and an air defence system, as well as funding for two HAWK air defence systems, anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition, and counter-drone systems.
There will come a time when the West will realise that it is impossible to win a war against Russia without hitting the centres of live meat, equipment, machinery and equipment that are built up on its territory.
The US Congress cannot approve a $20 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey until Ankara ratifies Sweden and Finland's membership of NATO, a bipartisan group of senators said on Thursday.
Well, it's finally been made public. A few months ago, we said that the main pressure on Sweden from Turkey was related to the acquisition of these fourth-generation fighters. Erdogan has long been dreaming rosy dreams about F-16s and is doing everything he can to get the US to sell them to a country ruled by a dictator who is at war with the Kurds. We believe that we can now make another educated guess: the latest attack on the Koran in Sweden is not the work of Russia at all, but of Erdogan's own secret services.
The Hungarian Foreign Minister, Peter Szijjarto, has accused the United States Ambassador in Budapest of trying to interfere in Hungary's internal affairs. US Ambassador David Pressman called Hungary's approach to the war in neighbouring Ukraine "pushing a policy that Putin supports".
Pressman, a Biden administration appointee who previously served as US ambassador to the United Nations for special political affairs, has been facing serious difficulties since taking up his post in Hungary last August. Local media, loyal to the right-wing government of populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, have accused the diplomat of interfering in Hungary's judicial system and of promoting American colonialism.
Since taking office, Pressman has been vocal about the rising tide of anti-American sentiment in Hungary and the Orban government's reluctance to join the European Union and to impose sanctions on Moscow over its war in Ukraine.
Russian Führer Putin, in predicting Russia's triumph in the war in Ukraine, recalled the famous Second World War victory over the Nazis in order to rally his people. On the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi German forces in the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, Putin laid a wreath at the Eternal Flame Memorial Complex for the Red Army Dragoons in Volgograd (the present name of the city).
"Unfortunately, we see that the ideology of Nazism, in its modern form and manifestations, is once again posing a direct threat to the security of our country," the war criminal said in his speech on Thursday. "Again and again, we must confront the collective aggression of the West." Putin also slammed Germany for helping to arm Kiev and again wasted threats to use the entire Russian arsenal, which includes nuclear weapons.
"Unbelievable, but it is a fact: they are threatening us again with German Leopard tanks with crosses painted on their armour", said the world's No 1 terrorist, the neo-Nazi Putin.
In case anyone else in the West does not understand, here is the translation: Russia is at war with the West, and will continue to be at war until Ukraine is completely destroyed. Then it will be the turn of the Baltic States and Poland. Russia will not stop. It can only be stopped. The first step is the lightning destruction of the Black Sea Fleet.
Operational level
Without major changes.
President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed in a video address yesterday that Ukraine must continue to work on strengthening its resilience and remain united in providing its defenders with the necessary weapons. The Russian occupiers have now reached a point where Russia's strategic defeat is clear. Tactically, however, they still have the resources to take offensive action.
The UK Defence Secretary says that his country has not ruled out supplying Ukraine with fighter jets. However, Ben Wallace warned that such aircraft would not be a "magic bullet" for Ukraine's defence against Russia.
"I have been quite clear on the fighter aircraft process. One thing I have learnt over the years is that you don't have to rule anything in and rule anything out," Wallace said.
William Burns, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, said on Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitions for Taiwan should not be underestimated, although he has probably been sobered by the appearance of Russian troops in Ukraine.
V. Burns said that the United States is "intelligence aware" that Xi has ordered his troops to be ready to invade self-ruled Taiwan by 2027.
The US authorities denied Swiss media reports that the White House and the CIA had offered Ukraine to give up some territories in exchange for peace with Russia. Sean Dewitt, deputy spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a comment to reporters that the statement published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung was "inaccurate".
Meanwhile, another unnamed CIA spokesman also assured reporters that the head of the agency, William Burns, had not made a secret trip to Moscow in January and had not proposed a peace plan for Ukraine. The spokesman called the Swiss newspaper's report "completely false".
During the 11 months of the war, Russia has lost around 200 000 soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine. This is according to the New York Times, citing US and Western officials. "The number of casualties in 11 months is eight times higher than the number of American casualties in the two-decade war in Afghanistan", the article says.
The occupation troops suffered particularly heavy losses in the battles for Bakhmut and Soledar. "The war is modelled on World War II, when more than 8 million Soviet soldiers died. Putin is prepared for hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine, although more casualties could undermine his political support", the document reads.
We correct only one thing: even millions of dead Drisks will not hurt any political support.
The United States has advised the Ukrainian army to wait for new arms supplies. It is also possible that the Ukrainian armed forces will have to withdraw from Bakhmut, Donetsk region, in order to gather resources for the spring offensive.
"According to the official, the US is advising the Ukrainian forces to stretch their time in order to wait for the arrival of tanks and other weaponry. Ukraine may also have to withdraw its troops soon from the eastern city of Bakhmut to build up resources for a spring offensive in the south, US and European officials said, giving Russia a symbolic victory," Bloomberg reports.
Unfortunately, this is true. Stretching time. Remember the scenarios we presented last December, and the most likely of the four, which we called 'rubber-stretching'?
The tactical level
In the morning, guerrillas blow up a car in one of the neighbourhoods of the occupied city of Enerkhodar. According to Dmytro Rogov, a collaborator of the Russian fascists and a Koloborant, the explosion killed one person. Russian law enforcement officials arrived at the scene.
Two brothers were killed in a Russian criminal shelling of a private house in Barvenkovo. Oleh Sinegubov, Chairman of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, reported that at 4.30 a.m. the enemy shelled the town of Barvenkovo in the Izum district. Two brothers, aged 49 and 42, were killed in a private residential house. Their 70-year-old father was injured and hospitalised.
The Russian Federation is destroying critical infrastructure, hitting civilian objects and civilian homes.
During the past day, the enemy launched 4 missile attacks, 2 of which hit civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk region town of Kramatorsk, as well as 5 air strikes. More than 70 attacks with salvo fire systems were carried out against civilian objects in Kherson oblast and Mykolaiv oblast. Civilians were killed and wounded by enemy strikes.
The threat of further Russian air and missile strikes across the territory of Ukraine remains high.
The enemy is continuing its offensive on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlovsk axes with heavy losses.
In the vicinity of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson, more than 40 settlements have been shelled with mortars, guns and rocket artillery.
During the previous day, the Ukrainian Defence Forces' aviation struck 4 times at areas where the occupiers were concentrated. The defenders also destroyed a Russian Merlin unmanned aerial vehicle. Rocket and artillery units struck a checkpoint, 3 concentration points and an enemy ammunition depot.
Russian forces are pushing intensively in six directions in the Krasnorichensky-Kremina-Lysychiansk section. In the morning, the farthest advancing Drisks have clashed with Ukrainian forces near Yampolivka, while troops on the ground report close contact near Zarichne, less than 10 km east of Lyman.
Photo: An atempt to stop Russo-Fascist attack on one of the positions on the eastern front.
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