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Biden will be 'messaging' Putin in Poland speech
President Joe Biden will be “messaging” his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, when he speaks in Warsaw on Tuesday, the US says, while hailing Nato’s unprecedented effort to help Ukraine.
Agence France-Presse reports that Biden is to give the speech in Poland – a key US ally and – on the same day Putin is set to give his own speech in Moscow, three days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s 24 invasion.
Biden will touch down in Warsaw on Tuesday and meet with Polish president, Andrzej Duda. On Wednesday he meets with leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of Nato members in eastern Europe.
In addition, the White House said, he would speak by phone next week with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is due in Washington on 3 March.
But Biden’s main public event will be the speech delivered on Tuesday from Warsaw’s Royal Castle on “how the United States has rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and democracy”, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.
President Biden will make it clear that the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine ... for as long as it takes.
… And I would suspect that you’ll hear him messaging Mr Putin as well, as well as the Russian people.
Kirby said Biden had no plans to meet with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during the trip or travel into Ukraine.
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More than 142,000 Russian soldiers killed
More than 142,000 Russian soldiers have now been killed since the invasion of Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military.
In its daily update on combat losses, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces estimated the death toll on the Russian side to be 142,270, up by 1,010 since Friday.
It said that 3,303 tanks and 6,533 armoured vehicles had also been destroyed, increases on yesterday of five and 13 respectively.
Загальні бойові втрати противника з 24.02.22 по 18.02.23 орієнтовно склали / The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 18.02.23 were approximately: pic.twitter.com/xiO4Dg9Weg
— Генеральний штаб ЗСУ (@GeneralStaffUA) February 18, 2023The Pentagon said on Friday that the first Ukrainian battalion with about 635 soldiers had completed a roughly five-week-long U.S. course of combined arms training on the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Germany. Additional battalion-level combined arms training was already underway, it said.
The United States has announced plans to give Ukraine more than 50 of the armoured vehicles, which have a powerful gun and have been used by the U.S. Army to carry troops around battlefields since the mid-1980s.
Moscow accused the United States of fuelling an escalation of the war and now being directly involved.
“The American warmongers... supply weapons in huge quantities, provide intelligence and participate directly in the planning of combat operations,” said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, on Friday.
Rishi Sunak has boarded his flight from Stansted to Germany to attend the Munich security conference, according to the Press Association.
The prime minister will give a speech and meet with a number of world leaders while at the summit.
He is also expected to meet European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the fringes to talk about a deal to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The governor of Luhansk province in Ukraine’s east says ground and air attacks from Russian forces are increasing.
Serhiy Haidai told local TV of fighting near the city of Kreminna:
Today it is rather difficult on all directions. There are constant attempts to break through our defence lines.
Luhansk is one of two provinces in the Donbas region that Russia partially controls and wants to take fully.
Reuters also reported that Russia said in its latest update that a barrage of missile strikes on Thursday around Ukraine had achieved their goals in hitting facilities providing fuel and ammunition to Kyiv’s forces.
Ukraine reported 36 missiles, saying 16 were shot down and that its largest oil refinery, Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, was hit.
Biden will be 'messaging' Putin in Poland speech
President Joe Biden will be “messaging” his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, when he speaks in Warsaw on Tuesday, the US says, while hailing Nato’s unprecedented effort to help Ukraine.
Agence France-Presse reports that Biden is to give the speech in Poland – a key US ally and – on the same day Putin is set to give his own speech in Moscow, three days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s 24 invasion.
Biden will touch down in Warsaw on Tuesday and meet with Polish president, Andrzej Duda. On Wednesday he meets with leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of Nato members in eastern Europe.
In addition, the White House said, he would speak by phone next week with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is due in Washington on 3 March.
But Biden’s main public event will be the speech delivered on Tuesday from Warsaw’s Royal Castle on “how the United States has rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and democracy”, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.
President Biden will make it clear that the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine ... for as long as it takes.
… And I would suspect that you’ll hear him messaging Mr Putin as well, as well as the Russian people.
Kirby said Biden had no plans to meet with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during the trip or travel into Ukraine.
Hello, this is Adam Fulton bringing you the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the west to speed up its support for Ukraine, telling world leaders gathered in Munich, Germany, for a major security conference that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, would gain a military advantage unless arms deliveries arrived soon.
Zelenskiy said in a video address opening the summit on Friday:
We need to hurry up. We need speed – speed of our agreements, speed of our delivery … speed of decisions to limit Russian potential.
About 40 heads of state and government as well as politicians and security experts from nearly 100 countries – including the US, Europe and China – are expected to attend the three-day conference to discuss Europe’s security situation amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the US president, Joe Biden, will be “messaging” his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, when he speaks in Poland on Tuesday, the US says. More on that story soon.
In other developments at it approaches 9am in Kyiv and 10am in Moscow:
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, urged allies to intensify their military support for Ukraine to help it carry out a needed counter-offensive against Russia. There could be no peace in Ukraine until Russia was defeated, Macron said at the Munich conference, adding that Russia was doomed to “a defeat in the future”.
Zelenskiy warned a possible consequence of delaying western weapons to Ukraine could be a Russian invasion of Moldova. He said neighbouring Belarus would make a mistake of historic proportions if it joined in the Russian offensive and claimed polls showed 80% of its people did not wish to join.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, gave Zelenskiy an indirect rebuff, saying caution was better than hasty decisions and unity was better than going it alone. Scholz said Germany was the biggest supplier of weapons in continental Europe, and that the region was in uncharted territory and there was no blueprint for confronting a nuclear-armed aggressor, making it vital to avoid an unintended escalation.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will call on world leaders to ensure a “lasting peace” for Ukraine with the establishment of a new Nato charter to help it defend itself “again and again” in the face of any future declarations of war by Russia. Sunak is expected at the Munich conference to call for countries to “double down on our military support”, and to warn that “the security and sovereignty of every nation” is at stake.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has said the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by the US undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland, about Crimea. Nuland had said the US supported Ukraine striking at targets in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in a move that is only recognised by a handful of mostly rogue states.
As many as 60,000 Russian forces may have been killed in just under a year of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said. The casualty rate “has significantly increased since September 2022 when ‘partial mobilisation’ was imposed”. Convict recruits used by Wagner may have had a casualty rate of one in every two men.
Russia’s defence ministry website has confirmed Lt Gen Andrey Mordvichev is the new head of the central military district, replacing Col Gen Alexandr Lapin, who in January was appointed chief of staff of Russia’s ground forces. Mordvichev’s appointment follows other sweeping changes to Russia’s military leadership.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the Dutch ambassador over what it called “obsessive attempts” by authorities in the Netherlands to hold it responsible for the downing of flight MH17 in Ukraine in 2014. In a statement Russia accused the joint investigation team set up to establish who was responsible of being “politicised”.
The World Health Organization has appealed for more funds to support Ukraine’s health sector, which has been severely damaged by the war. Ukraine needed more funds to ensure mental health, rehabilitation and community access to health services, said the WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, in a briefing in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr.
A British embassy security guard has been jailed for more than 13 years after a judge told him his “treachery” spying for Russia had put his former colleagues at “maximum risk”. David Ballantyne Smith, 58, originally from Paisley, Scotland, copied secret documents he found in unlocked filing cabinets and on desks at the embassy, including a letter to the then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, on the war against Ukraine.
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