Germany declined to take a decision on whether to give Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine at a special international summit held at the Ramstein US air force base in Germany. It had been hoped in Europe and the US that Germany would at least allow Leopards owned by countries such as Poland and Finland to be re-exported, but despite days of pleading, Berlin’s newly appointed defence minister said no final decision had been taken.
Berlin’s reluctance to act over sending German-made tanks to Ukraine prompted frustration in Kyiv and a warning from Poland that lives could be lost. Mariusz Błaszczak, Poland’s defence minister, said he was still “convinced that coalition-building will end in success”. But Poland’s foreign affairs minister, Zbigniew Rau, said Ukrainian blood was the “price of hesitation” over the delivery of tanks to Ukraine.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said the group of Kyiv-supporting defence ministers were focused on “making sure that Ukraine has the capability that it needs to be successful right now”. Speaking after the Ramstein airbase meeting, Austin described Germany as a “reliable ally” and said the package of military aid being sent to Ukraine was “very, very capable”. Before the meeting, Austin had called for allies to “dig deeper” in their support for Ukraine because “history is watching us”, as he gave details of the $2.5bn military aid package the US announced on Thursday.
The meeting at the Ramstein base was attended in person by Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, and was addressed via video link by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy, at the opening of the meeting, pleaded with Germany and western allies to send their battle tanks to Kyiv. He said urgent action was necessary because “Russia is concentrating its forces, last forces, trying to convince everyone that hatred can be stronger than the world”.
The Kremlin said supplying additional tanks to Kyiv would not “fundamentally change anything” and warned that the west would regret its “delusion” that Ukraine could win on the battlefield. Russia’s relationship with the US was at its “lowest point historically”, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also said, with “no hope” of bilateral relations improving “in the foreseeable future”.
Russian proxy forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in the Donbas region said they had taken control of Klishchiivka, a small settlement south of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is reportedly alarmed by the losses the Ukrainian army is taking in Bakhmut.
It will be “very, very difficult” for Ukraine to “military eject” Russian forces from every inch of occupied territory this year, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, said. Meanwhile, senior US officials have reportedly urged Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive against Russian forces until the latest supply of US weaponry is in place and training is provided.
Ukraine claims it has arrested seven Russian agents in Dnipro, who are accused of assisting missile attacks on the city.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said the Wagner mercenary group “almost certainly now commands up to 50,000 fighters in Ukraine and has become a key component of the Ukraine campaign”.
EU countries are reportedly working on a 10th round of Russia-related sanctions. The next package of sanctions “will be somewhere around” the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, one senior diplomat told Reuters. EU officials are also seeking approval from ministers for a seventh tranche of military aid for Ukraine worth €500m.
The US will impose additional sanctions against the Wagner Group, the White House national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, has said. The US treasury department plans to designate Wagner as a significant transnational criminal organisation, which would freeze any assets the group has in the US and prohibit Americans from providing funds, goods or services to the group.
A group of nine Nato countries pledged a raft of new military aid for Ukraine before Friday’s meeting in Germany. The aid from countries including Britain, Latvia and Poland will include tens of Stinger air defence systems, S-60 anti-aircraft guns, machine guns and training.
The $2.5bn in new weaponry and munitions for Ukraine announced by the US on Thursday includes 90 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, an additional 59 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Avenger air defence systems, and large and small munitions, according to a Pentagon statement.
A UN humanitarian convoy has reached an area close to the town of Soledar, in east Ukraine. A UN spokesperson said the three-truck convoy carrying food, water, hygiene kits and medical supplies for 800 people had set off early on Friday from Dnipro for Soledar, where some of the fiercest fighting in the country has taken place in recent weeks.
The UK has offered qualified support for the creation of a special tribunal capable of holding the Russian civilian and military leadership, including Vladimir Putin, to account for war crimes in Ukraine.
Italian authorities are on the hunt for a Russian oligarch after two of his luxury yachts that were seized under EU sanctions mysteriously disappeared from a port in Sardinia. The yachts belonging to Dmitry Mazepin, the billionaire owner of a mineral fertiliser company, went missing from the Sardinian port of Olbia within weeks of each other last summer.
