Oleksiy Kuleba, governor of Kyiv, said Thursday that ten adults and six children remain in hospital following Wednesday’s helicopter crash which claimed the life of interior minister Denys Monastyrskiy and 14 other people. Kuleba said families of the victims will receive financial assistance, and that children from the kindergarten damaged when the helicopter fell are studying in nearby preschools.
Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne is reporting that eleven people are still considered missing after Saturday’s attack on a high-rise building in Dnipro.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that Ukrainian strikes on Russian-annexed Crimea would be “extremely dangerous”, after the New York Times reported that US officials were warming to the idea of helping Kyiv strike the peninsula. “This will mean raising the conflict to a new level that will not bode well for European security”, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters at his daily briefing. Crimea, which is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, was annexed by Russia in 2014.
The comments came as the Sweden announced it would be sending the Archer artillery system for use by Kyiv, a vehicle-mounted self-propelled gun howitzer made by Bofors BAE. The country has also committed to sending infantry fighting vehicles in a move announced in a press conference in Stockholm on Thursday morning.
The British and Polish defence ministers will meet with their counterparts from the Baltic states in Estonia, in a Ramstein pre-meeting – ahead of a wider defence summit on Friday – designed to put further pressure on Germany to move forward with sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
A government source in Berlin told Reuters Germany will send German-made tanks to Ukraine so long as the United States agrees to do likewise, as Nato partners remained out of step over how best to arm Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier promised further military support to Ukraine and warned the incoming defence minister that Germany’s armed forces must once again become capable of protecting the nation. Social Democrat Boris Pistorius was officially made minister on Thursday in a ceremony attended by Steinmeier.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stepped up calls for Ukraine’s army to be supplied with heavy tanks and urged “resolve and speed” of decision-making from western allies. Addressing a packed gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos via video link on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president warned that “tyranny is outpacing democracy”.
Dmitry Medvedev, the hawkish long-term ally of Vladimir Putin, has warned of a nuclear escalation if Russia is defeated in Ukraine, saying that western politicians “repeated like a mantra: ‘To achieve peace, Russia must lose’”, but “it never occurs to any of them to draw the following elementary conclusion from this: the loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war”. Peskov later said the comments made by the deputy chairman of the security council of Russia were fully in accordance with Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, said people can spend too much time obsessing about Putin, and worrying about escalating the conflict. “How can you escalate against a guy who is doing all out war against a civilian population?”, he said. He also cast doubt on whether Russia would use nuclear weapons and internationally isolate itself from countries like China.
Canada announced Wednesday it would donate 200 armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine. The move came during a visit to Kyiv by Canada’s defence minister, Anita Anand. Zelenskiy thanked the Canadian people and its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “on this difficult day”, referring to the helicopter crash in Brovary.
Bulgaria helped Ukraine survive Russia’s early onslaught by secretly supplying it with large amounts of desperately needed diesel and ammunition, the politicians responsible have said. The former Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov and finance minister Assen Vassilev said their country – one of the poorest EU members and long perceived as pro-Moscow – provided 30% of the Soviet-calibre ammunition Ukraine’s army needed during a crucial three-month period last spring, and at times 40% of the diesel.
Poland’s president has warned that Russia could be planning a new offensive in the coming months, calling on countries to provide Ukraine with “weapons, weapons, weapons”. Andrzej Duda told delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Russia was still strong and that more action was needed to support Ukraine, saying current levels of assistance were inadequate.
Ukraine reported intense fighting overnight in the east of the country, where both sides have taken huge losses for little gain in intense trench warfare over the past two months. Ukrainian forces repelled attacks in the eastern city of Bakhmut and the nearby village of Klishchiivka, the Ukrainian military said. Russia has focused on Bakhmut in recent weeks, claiming last week to have taken the mining town of Soledar on its northern outskirts. “We notice a gradual increase in the number of shelling occasions and attempts at offensive actions by the occupiers,” Zelenskiy said in his latest address.
