A Russian “reconnaissance and sabotage group” shot dead two people – a brother and sister – in a Ukrainian village on Saturday during a cross-border incursion, local officials said. The attack in Andriivka occurred in Ukraine’s Sumy region inside a 5km (three-mile) buffer zone along the border with Russia – an area where Kyiv had asked residents to evacuate. The victims were a 54-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman who were killed while driving in an SUV, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said.
At least three other civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the east and south of the country, local officials said on Saturday. In Beryslav in the southern Kherson region, explosives dropped from a drone killed one person, the governor said. Two were killed by Russian artillery shelling in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s national police said.
Russian missiles struck an industrial site in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk on Saturday, sparking a fire, according to the local governor. Filip Pronin, governor of Poltava region, wrote on Telegram that two Russian ballistic missiles had hit the target in the city. He later said there were no casualties.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, further south-east from Kremenchuk, the local governor said an infrastructure site had been hit in a drone attack. Yuri Malashko gave no details of damage or casualties but emergency crews were at the site.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had uncovered a corruption scheme in the purchase of arms by the country’s military totalling the equivalent of about $40m (£31.5m/€37m). Saturday’s announcement of mass procurement fraud, confirmed by Ukraine’s defence ministry, will have a huge resonance in the country amid Russia’s invasion, with the fight to root out corruption remaining a major issue as Kyiv presses its bid to secure membership in the European Union, reports Reuters.
Ukrainian counterattacks were holding Russians back from taking full control of Avdiivka, the UK Ministry of Defence said. Russian forces had suffered heavy personnel and armoured vehicle losses, frequently caused by Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicle munitions, the ministry outlined in an intelligence update. The forces continued to attempt to bypass Ukrainian fortifications by entering the city edges via service tunnels but “Ukrainian counterattacks are holding Russian forces from progressing further within the city”.
The Biden administration has announced the approval of a $23bn deal to sell F-16 warplanes to Turkey, after Ankara ratified Sweden’s Nato membership, the US state department said.
Ukraine has pressed Russia to provide proof that a military plane shot down during the week had been carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, as it claimed. The latest twist in the row over the incident came as Ukrainian officials said a Russian raid had killed two civilians near their border. Ukraine’s spy chief, Kyrylo Budanov, questioned on state TV why Russia had not shown any images of the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers that Moscow claims were killed when the plane was shot down. Kyiv has confirmed a prisoner exchange was to take place that day.
President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine “glorifies” Adolf Hitler’s SS killing squads and vowed to “eradicate nazism” as he opened a memorial marking 80 years since the end of the siege of Leningrad. The Russian leader has repeatedly invoked the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war to justify the war against Ukraine. His charge that Ukraine is a fascist state that needs “denazifying” has been debunked as false by independent experts.
Joe Biden will host the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at the White House on 9 February to discuss aid to Ukraine. It comes as the US president has been pressing Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with aid for Ukraine. The talks have hit a critical point as Republican opposition mounts.
The US is planning to station nuclear weapons in the UK for the first time in 15 years amid a growing threat from Russia, according to a report. Warheads three times as strong as the Hiroshima bomb would be located at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk under the proposals, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported.
