Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
A search and rescue operation in the rubble of Saturday’s Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro has been completed, authorities said. The death toll currently stands at 45, including a child, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region military administration said. At least 19 people are still missing and a further 79 people injured, according to local officials. A makeshift memorial has appeared in Moscow to commemorate the victims of the Russian missile attack.
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. The Ukrainian air force says the apartment complex was hit by a Russian Kh-22 missile, which Kyiv does not have the equipment to shoot down.
Russia has announced it will make “major changes” to its armed forces from 2023-26, promising to shake up its military structure after months of setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine. In addition to administrative changes, the defence ministry said it would strengthen the combat capabilities of its naval, aerospace and strategic missile forces. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the changes had been made necessary by the “proxy war” being conducted in Ukraine by the west.
More than 9,000 civilians, including 453 children, have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last February, Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, said at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. “We will not forgive a single (act of) torture or life taken. Each criminal will be held accountable,” he said, adding that Ukraine wanted a special international tribunal to try Russian political leaders and reparations for the destruction caused by Russia’s invasion.
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 said on Monday. The UN rights office said it had confirmed 7,031 civilian deaths but believed actual casualty tolls were considerably higher, given the pending corroboration of many reports and the inaccessibility of areas where intense fighting was taking place.
Ukraine’s top general, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, spoke to his US counterpart, Gen Mark Milley, at a face to face meeting near the Ukraine-Poland border for the first time. Milley, who is the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met for a couple of hours with Zaluzhnyi at an undisclosed location in south-eastern Poland on Tuesday. The pair have talked frequently about Ukraine’s military needs and the state of the war over the past year but had never met.
Ukraine has urged world leaders to intensify efforts to remove Vladimir Putin’s troops from its soil as its war with Russia dominated the first full day of the gathering of the global elite in Davos. With the war clouding the outlook for the global economy in 2023, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Yuliia Svyrydenko urged the country’s allies to step up supplies of military hardware so that Russia could be more quickly defeated. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, used a special address to demand that those attending the World Economic Forum used their influence to end Russia’s aggression.
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, has told the US president, Joe Biden, that the Netherlands will offer Patriot missiles to Ukraine. The Netherlands will join the US and Germany in sending the Patriot missile defence system to Ukraine, Rutte told Biden at the White House. Biden thanked Rutte for being “very very stalwart” on its support for Ukraine.
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has justified the supply of Challenger tanks to Ukraine, saying it was designed to bring the war to a quick conclusion and there was a moral imperative to end the war soon due to the casualties and cost. His remarks seemed designed to encourage the US to step up its own weapons supply and to push back against those Republicans calling for US support for the war to be scaled back.
Finland is prepared to support Ukraine in its war with Russia for “as long as needed”, its prime minister, Sanna Marin, said. “I think the only message that we need to send is that we will support Ukraine as long as needed. One year, two years, five years, 10 years, 15 years,” Marin said at Davos. Finland spent about €300m on support to Ukraine last year, around €190m of it on buying defence equipment.
The British defence minister, Ben Wallace, will join counterparts from Poland and the Baltic countries in Estonia to mount a final attempt to put pressure on Germany to authorise sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine this week. Defence sources said a purpose of the meeting on Thursday was “to encourage the Germans” if no decision had been made by Berlin before then, although chancellor Olaf Scholz is due to speak at the Davos summit on Wednesday afternoon.
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 money will pay public sector wages, pensions and keep schools and hospitals running, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said at Davos.
A former commander with the Russian mercenary Wagner Group who last week sought asylum in Norway has spoken of how he is “scared for his life”. 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 denied reports that the Wagner Group had a presence in Serbia, where pro-Kremlin and ultranationalist organisations have supported the invasion of Ukraine.
The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has vowed he will not give up his activism on the second anniversary of his return to Russia and imprisonment. Navalny’s daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, also posted a video calling for her father’s release, accusing the Putin regime of “tormenting and depriving” him “of any connection with the world in order to silence him”.
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The British defence minister, Ben Wallace, will join counterparts from Poland and the Baltic countries in Estonia to mount a final attempt to put pressure on Germany to authorise sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine this week.
The meeting of the “Leopard coalition” of countries willing to or keen to see western tanks sent to Kyiv comes a day before a group of about 50 defence ministers assemble in Ramstein, Germany, to discuss future weapons shipments to Ukraine.
Defence sources said a purpose of the meeting on Thursday was “to encourage the Germans” if no decision had been made by Berlin before then, although chancellor Olaf Scholz is due to speak at the Davos summit on Wednesday afternoon.
Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum on Tuesday, said that a positive decision from Berlin to allow the re-export of German-manufactured Leopard 2 tanks was “very, very, very, very needed” and that a group of Nato countries wanted to come together to help form an armoured brigade that could be given to Ukraine.
He added:
I was asked by Volodymyr Zelenskiy for that military support a few times. He said to me, ‘Andrzej, we need those modern tanks because it is the only way to stop the Russian invasion.’
Read the full story by my colleagues Dan Sabbagh and Kate Connolly:
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