More than 7,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbour last February, the Office of the UN high commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Monday. The UN rights office said it had confirmed 7,031 civilian deaths but believes actual casualty tolls are “considerably higher” given the pending corroboration of many reports and the inaccessibility of areas where intense fighting is taking place.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, said more than 9,000 civilians, including 453 children, had been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last February. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos, Yermak added that Ukraine wanted a special international tribunal to try Russian political leaders and reparations for the destruction caused by Russia’s invasion.
Rescue workers on Tuesday found the body of a child in the rubble of the high-rise residential building in Dnipro struck by Russia at the weekend, and the city’s mayor Borys Filatov, said the the official death toll had risen to 44. Authorities said the search and rescue operation in Dnipro has been completed, with 20 people still missing and a further 79 people injured.
The Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has tendered his resignation after a public outcry over comments he made suggesting the Russian missile that struck the building in Dnipro had been shot down by Ukraine.
A makeshift memorial appeared in Moscow to commemorate the victims of Russia’s missile attack on the Dnipro residential building. It was sited at the foot of a statue of the Ukrainian writer, Lesya Ukrainka, in central Moscow.
An educational facility in Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region has been struck by an S-300 missile and “almost completely destroyed” according to regional governor Oleh Synyehubov, who said “according to preliminary information, there were no casualties.”
Russia has announced that it would make “major changes” to its armed forces from 2023 to 2026, promising to shake up its military structure after months of setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine. In addition to administrative reforms, the defence ministry said it would strengthen the combat capabilities of its naval, aerospace and strategic missile forces. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the changes had been made necessary by the “proxy war” being conducted in Ukraine by the west. Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
Russia and Ukraine have been working on a large prisoner exchange deal which will include 1,000 people in total, Turkish ombudsman Seref Malkoc said on Monday. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova and her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Lubinets met last week on the sidelines of an international ombudsman conference in Ankara.
The EU executive has confirmed it is releasing €3bn in emergency aid for Ukraine, the first tranche of an €18bn fund intended to help its government run essential public services during the winter. The €3bn will pay public sector wages, pensions and keep schools and hospitals running, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was “grateful” to the EU and said preserving Ukraine’s financial stability is “vital for our joint victory over the aggressor”.
Britain will send a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine to help push back Russia’s invasion, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has confirmed. Outlining details to the UK’s parliament on Monday, Wallace described the military support as “the most significant package of combat power to date to accelerate Ukrainian success”.
The announcement makes the UK the first western power to supply the Ukrainians with main battle tanks, which would be used to help train Ukrainian troops, and will heap further pressure on Germany to approve a wider delivery of the vehicles this week. Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, urged Germany to permit the supply of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, adding that the move could unlock support from other nations.
Germany should take “decisive actions” and send “all sorts of weapons” to Ukraine to help its troops defend themselves against Russia’s invasion, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said. Morawiecki, speaking in parliament, implicitly criticised the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for his reluctance to supply Kyiv with heavier weaponry.
Boris Pistorius, the Social Democrat interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony, will be Germany’s new defence minister, the government confirmed on Tuesday. His predecessor, Christine Lambrecht, quit yesterday after a series of blunders, with he critics saying she was not up to job of getting German army into shape against backdrop of Ukraine war.
Nato surveillance planes are due to arrive in Romania Tuesday to bolster the military alliance’s eastern flank and help monitor Russian military activity. Nato announced last week it would deploy the Airborne Warning and Control System (Awacs) surveillance planes to Bucharest, where they will start reconnaissance flights solely over Nato territory.
The self-styled leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, has claimed that the city of Marinka, west of Donetsk, is on the brink of falling to pro-Russian forces.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has said a French foreign legion soldier has been found dead in eastern Ukraine. The claim has not been independently verified.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, and her Dutch counterpart, Wopke Hoekstra, on Mondaycondemned the deportation by Russians of thousands of Ukrainian children. Russia “must account for the whereabouts of these children”, Baerbock said at a joint news conference with Hoekstra, who said this “deliberate Russian policy” is “tearing families apart and traumatising children”.
President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke by phone on Monday where they discussed the conflict in Ukraine, according to readouts of the call from both sides. The pair discussed the question of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, the Kremlin said, as well as the export of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports and ways to unblock fertiliser and food exports from Russia.
A former commander with the Russian mercenary Wagner Group has sought asylum in Norway after deserting the organisation that has played a central role in some of the major battles of the Ukraine conflict. Andrey Medvedev, 26, said in an interview last month with the Guardian that in Ukraine he had witnessed the summary killing of Wagner fighters accused by their own commanders of disobeying orders, sometimes in pairs.
Serbia’s president has called on Russia to stop recruiting Serbs to fight alongside its mercenary Wagner Group in Ukraine. Aleksandar Vučić criticised Russian websites and social media groups for publicising adverts in the Serbian language in which the Russian private mercenary group calls for volunteers to join its ranks. He also denied reports that the Wagner Group had a presence in Serbia where pro-Kremlin and ultranationalist organisations have supported the invasion of Ukraine.
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The US is imposing visa restrictions on 25 people for undermining democracy in Belarus with politically motivated trials of opposition leaders and activists, secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced.
