A Ukrainian military spokesperson has said that “there is no such decision now” to withdraw from the key eastern stronghold of Bakhmut. Russian forces continue to make incremental gains in Bakhmut and do “not stop assaulting the city”, the Ukrainian military’s general staff said in an update on Wednesday morning. Ukrainian troops could “strategically pull back” from the key eastern stronghold of Bakhmut if needed, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Alexander Rodnyansky told CNN on Tuesday.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, has said Ukrainian forces are putting up “furious resistance” against Moscow’s attempt to seize Bakhmut. “The Ukrainian army is throwing extra reserves into Artyomovsk and trying to hold the town with all their strength. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian army fighters are putting up furious resistance. The bloodiness of the battles is growing by the day,” he said in a short audio message released by his press service.
Finnish MPs have voted overwhelmingly to speed up the country’s Nato accession process. Approval of Nato’s treaties and Finland’s accession passed with 184 members of the 200-seat parliament voting in favour, seven against and one abstaining. Both Finland, which has one of Europe’s longest borders with Russia, and Sweden dropped their decades-long policies of military non-alignment and applied to join Nato in May last year in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Facing fewer diplomatic hurdles than Stockholm, Helsinki wants to move forward even before Finland’s general elections in April, as public opinion also supports membership.
Hungary’s president, Katalin Novák, urged lawmakers on Wednesday to ratify Finland and Sweden’s Nato entry “as soon as possible” as deputies started debating the motions after months of the bills being stranded in parliament. Hungary and Turkey are so far the only two Nato countries not to ratify their admission. Talks between Turkey, Sweden and Finland are set to resume in Brussels on 9 March.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to president Volodymr Zelenskiy, has denied that Ukraine mounts attacks within Russian territory. On Tuesday Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukraine of launching a spate of attempted drone strikes targeting infrastructure inside Russia, including near Moscow, after a fire broke out at an oil depot in Tuapse, Krasnodar and authorities briefly closed airspace above St Petersburg. The Kremlin responded to Podolyak’s statement on Wednesday by saying it did not believe it.
Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports that two people were injured following Russian shelling in Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region, and that over the last 24 hours, five people died and seven were injured by shelling in the Kherson region, while three were killed and four injured in Donetsk region.
Top US diplomat Antony Blinken was due in New Delhi on Wednesday alongside Russia’s Sergei Lavrov for a G20 meeting. A meeting was seen as unlikely between the two men, who have not been in the same room since a G20 meeting in Bali in July when, according to western officials, the Russian foreign minister walked out. An EU source has said the EU delegation would not support a statement at the G20 meeting in India if it did not include condemnation of the war.
Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus and Vladimir Putin’s close ally, has said he fully supports China’s international agenda and that Minsk and Beijing are pursuing the same policy. Lukashenko is on a high-profile state visit to China for talks with President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials. Xi said China was willing to work with Belarus to promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations at a high level, Chinese state media reported.
On Tuesday the Biden administration pledged to support the independence of the five Central Asian nations, with Blinken saying that no country – particularly those that have traditionally been in Moscow’s orbit – can afford to ignore the threats posed by Russian aggression to not only their territory but to the international rules-based order and the global economy.
A government official in Poland said on Wednesday that Russia was behind a hacking attack that blocked users’ access to the online tax filing system.
Russia brought new law amendments to parliament on Wednesday that further strengthen the country’s censorship laws, envisaging up to 15 years in jail for discrediting the armed forces and voluntary military organisations such as the Wagner group. Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said that “any public dissemination of knowingly false information about the forces” will be punishable
The US does not expect Russia to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the near term, a US undersecretary of defence has said. Describing the frontlines as a “grinding slog”, Colin Kahl told a House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday “I do not think that there’s anything I see that suggests the Russians can sweep across Ukraine and make significant territorial gains anytime in the next year or so.”
A hacking attack Tuesday caused some regional broadcasters in Russia to put out a false warning urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the emergencies ministry said.
Vladimir Putin told the FSB security service Tuesday to step up its intelligence activity and stop “sabotage groups” getting into Russia. Putin instructed the agency to strengthen its activity to counter what he described as growing espionage and sabotage operations against Russia by Ukraine and its western allies.
