Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, has described the situation at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine as “very dangerous” and very unstable. He said his attempt to broker a deal to protect the plant was still alive, adding that there had been increasing military activity in the region without giving details.
Ukraine’s frontline city of Avdiivka “is being wiped off the face of the Earth” amid intensifying Russian shelling, according to its top local official. Russian forces have been making recent gradual gains on the flanks of Avdiivka, and the Ukrainian military said last week that the city could become a “second Bakhmut”. Starting on Sunday, the city’s utilities will begin to be shut off as “more and more of the town is shelled and destroyed daily,” said Vitaliy Barabash, the city’s military administration head.
Russia’s 10th tank regiment has borne the brunt of the assault of Avdiivka and has likely lost a “large portion of its tanks” while attempting to surround the town from the south, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update. It said the regiment belonged to the 3rd Army Corps, the first major new formation Russia stood up to support its invasion since August 2022 and despite a period of training in Belarus, the formation “appears to display limited combat effectiveness”.
Ukraine is aiming to exhaust and inflict heavy losses on Russian forces trying to capture the small eastern city of Bakhmut, the commander of Ukrainian ground forces has said. In a video showing him addressing soldiers in what appeared to be a large industrial warehouse, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russia was continuing to focus on the Bakhmut area after months of battle.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited Ukraine’s northern Sumy region during his tour of areas of the country that have borne the brunt of Russia’s invasion. Zelenskiy met officials and local residents in the city of Okhtyrka, which had fierce battles last year but was never occupied, and Trostianets, which was occupied by Russian forces for a month and liberated in March 2022. During the past seven days, the Ukrainian leader has visited the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, parts of which were retaken last year from Russia, to the frontline area near Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region, and to Zaporizhzhia in the south.
Germany’s much-awaited shipment of 18 Leopard 2 battle tanks has arrived in Ukraine, the German defence ministry has confirmed. Berlin had promised 14 vehicles but increased that to 18 as part of a deal under which several EU states would contribute to a shipment of two Leopard 2 battalions and 31 American-made M1A2 Abrams tanks from the US.
The first Brotosj Challenger 2 main battle tanks have arrived in Ukraine and will soon begin combat missions, the country’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov has said. The UK said in January it would send 14 of the tanks to Ukraine. Reznikov wrote on Twitter that the tanks had “recently arrived in our country” and posted a video that showed him sitting in one of a long line of tanks in an open field, all of them flying Ukraine’s yellow and blue flag.
The US supports the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of “aggression” against Ukraine, officials said. The US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, Beth Van Schaak said the court might also be located elsewhere in Europe, at least at first, “in order “to reinforce Ukraine’s desired European orientation”.
Belarus’s foreign ministry has justified its decision to allow Russia to station nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, saying Minsk was acting to protect itself after years of pressure from the US and its allies aimed at changing its political and geopolitical direction. Minsk had been forced to house Russian nuclear weapons on its territory by the aggressive actions of Nato countries that were threatening Belarus’s own security, it said, according to Russian news agency Tass.
Belarus will certainly face further EU sanctions resulting from Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Moscow has made a deal to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said. Poland was considering further limitations on cross-border traffic, Morawiecki added.
A Russian man who was investigated by police after his 12-year-old daughter drew a picture depicting Russian bombing a family in Ukraine has been sentenced to two years in a penal colony, according to a rights group. Alexei Moskalyov, a single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, has been separated from his daughter, Maria, since he was placed under house arrest and she was taken into a state-run shelter last month. Court officials said on Tuesday that the 54-year-old fled house arrest overnight and that his whereabouts were unknown.
The International Olympic Committee has recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete in international sporting events under a neutral flag. A decision regarding next year’s Olympics in Paris and the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026 would be taken “at the appropriate time”, it said. Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said the committee’s decision is “a slap in the face for all Ukrainian athletes”.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. We’ll be back tomorrow. Thank you.
The US has not seen any indications that Russia is getting closer to using tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby has said.
It comes after Vladimir Putin announced on Saturday that Moscow has made a deal to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. The Russian president said he was acting after negotiations with his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, who he said had “long raised the question” of a nuclear deployment on his country’s territory.
Speaking to reporters today, Kirby said:
We’re watching this as best we can. We haven’t seen any movement by Mr Putin to act on what he pledged he would do.
The Belarusian foreign ministry today confirmed it will host Russian tactical nuclear weapons, saying the decision was a response to years of western pressure.
