Russians ‘eradicating towns’ in eastern Donbas; UN chief warns world is walking into wider war – as it happened

It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:

• Russian forces are attempting to tie down Ukrainian forces with fighting in the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine has said. Moscow is reportedly assembling additional troops there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, perhaps targeting the Luhansk region. “The battles for the region are heating up,” said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk. In Luhansk, fellow governor Serhiy Haidai said shelling there had subsided because “the Russians have been saving ammunition for a large-scale offensive”.

• Weeks of intense fighting continued to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said. The UK’s Ministry of Defence said Russia was continuing to make small advances in its efforts to encircle the Donbas city of Bakhmut. “While multiple alternative cross-country supply routes remain available to Ukrainian forces, Bakhmut is increasingly isolated,” the ministry said on Twitter.

• The western area of the Luhansk region is likely to be the focus of any new Russian offensive, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, who has been tipped to take over the Ministry of Defence, has said. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said that offensive would most likely be launched by “proper mechanised brigades” rather than the ill-trained reservists and Wagner mercenaries who have been suffering heavy casualties in recent battles.

• Ukraine has faced temperatures as low as -20C this winter, at the same time as dealing with a humanitarian crisis as Russia hits key civilian infrastructure, analysis has shown. Areas in Dnipro, Donetsk and Kharkiv are particularly vulnerable, according to research. Some areas are housing tens of thousands of displaced people through the winter, at the same time as crucial infrastructure – including energy and housing – is being targeted by Russian missiles and artillery.

• Any replacement of Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, will not take place this week, David Arakhamia, who is the head of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party, said on Monday. “We are waiting for the appointment of the heads of the ministry of internal affairs and security service of Ukraine,” he wrote on social media. On Sunday evening, Arakhamia said Kyrylo Budanov would replace Reznikov as defence minister. The announcement came after a large-scale corruption scandal in the defence ministry.

• The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has warned the world is walking into a “wider war” over Ukraine. Addressing the UN general assembly just weeks before the first anniversary of Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine, Guterres said: “The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing.”

• The EU’s legislature is preparing plans to host Volodymyr Zelenskiy should he decide to come to Brussels to attend an EU summit later this week, according to reports. The Ukrainian leader is expected to address a special session of the European parliament, the Financial Times writes, adding that the proposed plan is subject to security concerns that risk derailing Zelenskiy’s trip.

• Germany’s plan to quickly assemble two battalions of Leopard 2 tanks from European allies and send them to Ukraine is progressing slower than expected. Several states have yet to decide whether they can spare vehicles from their own stocks. In Europe, other than Berlin, only Poland and Portugal have so far made concrete promises to contribute Leopard 2 tanks. Ukrainian soldiers are supposed to start being trained on Leopard 2 tanks in Germany and Poland from this week. “Germany’s commitment stands,” the government spokesperson Wolfgang Büchner said on Monday.

• Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has proposed his country should provide some 75bn Norwegian kroner (£6.1 bn) in aid to Ukraine over five years. Half of the aid in 2023 will fund Kyiv’s military requirements while the rest will go to humanitarian needs, although this split could change in coming years, he said. The announcement comes after Støre’s government came under pressure to increase support for Ukraine, after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war.

• Canada’s defence minister, Anita Anand, shared an image of the first Canadian-donated Leopard tank arriving in Poland. “Alongside our allies, we’ll soon be training the armed forces of Ukraine in the use of this equipment,” she tweeted.

• The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, will not be meeting President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow this week, the Kremlin has said. Grossi is expected to meet officials from the Russian state nuclear energy firm Rosatom and the foreign ministry, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Moscow expected a “substantive dialogue”.

• Russia’s oil and gas revenues plunged 46% in January, compared with the same month in 2022, under the impact of the price cap on oil exports imposed by western allies over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s finance ministry said budget revenue in January was 35% lower compared with the same month in 2022, the last month before Russia sent troops into Ukraine.

• Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, worked for Soviet intelligence while living in Switzerland in the 1970s, Swiss newspapers have reported, citing declassified archives. Under the code name “Mikhailov” and officially in Geneva as a representative of the Russian Orthodox church at the World Council of Churches (WCC), Kirill’s mission was to influence the council and push it to denounce the US and its allies, the papers reported.

Ukraine’s main Catholic church has said it will move to a new calendar that would see Christmas celebrated on 25 December, rather than 7 January, as part of Kyiv’s efforts to break cultural links to Russia.

The move by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was welcomed by culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko, who posted to social media:

This decision is appropriate to the demands of our time and public opinion.

Michael Kofman, the director of the Russia studies programme at the CNA thinktank, has posted a series of tweets in which he discusses his thoughts on the current course of the war in Ukraine.

He writes that the Russian military was at its most vulnerable going into the winter, after its retreat from Kharkiv in September and Kherson in November.

Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilisation has since “helped stabilize Russian lines, raise manning levels, and establish reserves”, he says. “Consequently, Ukraine no longer enjoys a significant manpower advantage.”

Since October, Moscow has “likely doubled the force deployed in Ukraine, and significantly reduced the length of the front being defended after retreating from Kherson”, Kofman continues, adding that he estimates that there may be another 150,000 mobilised personnel still in Russia.

He writes that the situation around Bakhmut “increasingly looks precarious” for Ukraine, and that he “wouldn’t be surprised if they ultimately withdraw from the city”.

He adds:

However, UA has strong defensive lines outside Slovyansk/Kramatorsk while RU looks ill positioned to sustain momentum.

The battle for the town of Kreminna in northern Luhansk is arguably more significant than Bakhmut, Kofman says, because Kreminna “is a gateway to Rubizhne”.

Kofman goes on to say that he is “sceptical” that Russian forces will attempt a much larger scope offensive involving the cities of Kharkiv, Sumy and Kyiv, and that he believes Russia’s primary goal is Donbas.

He ends his thread by saying:

In general [Ukraine’s army] is still advantaged going into 2023, backed by countries with much greater GDP and defense industrial capacity. However, that depends on sustainability of external material support, and in the end potential is not predictive of outcomes.

Russia’s oil and gas revenues plunged 46% in January, compared with the same month in 2022, under the impact of the price cap on oil exports imposed by western allies over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Its finance ministry said budget revenue in January was 35% lower compared with last January, and that the budget deficit in January was 1.77tr roubles – about 60% of the shortfall that had been planned for the entire year.

Despite being the worst start to the year since at least 1998, the ministry said it remains on track to meet budget targets this year.

The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has warned the world is walking into a “wider war” over Ukraine during a speech presenting his 2023 priorities.

Addressing the UN general assembly just weeks before the first anniversary of Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine, Guterres described the war as “inflicting untold suffering on the Ukrainian people, with profound global implications”.

He said:

The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing. I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, worked for Soviet intelligence while living in Switzerland in the 1970s, according to reports.

Citing declassified archives, Swiss newspapers SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche reported that a Swiss police file “confirms that ‘Monsignor Kirill’, as he is referred to in this document, worked for the KGB”.

The papers said they had gained access to the file in the Swiss national archives.

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Kirill, leader of Russia’s dominant religious group, lived in Geneva in the early 1970s, officially as a representative of the Russian Orthodox church at the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Under the code name “Mikhailov”, Kirill’s mission was to influence the council, already infiltrated by the KGB, the papers reported.

The Soviet objective was to push the council to denounce the US and its allies, and to tone down its criticism of the lack of religious freedoms in the Soviet Union, the archives show.

My colleague Dan Sabbagh is in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, where the power is out and temperatures are below zero.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner group of mercenaries, has challenged Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to a dogfight for Bakhmut.

Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, published a video of himself in the cockpit of a military aircraft, saying:

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych [Zelenskiy], we have landed. We have bombed Bakhmut.

Tomorrow, I will fly a MiG-29. If you so desire, let’s meet in the skies. If you win, you take Artyomovsk [Bakhmut]. If not, we advance till [the River] Dnipro.

The short video was released by Prigozhin’s press service, which said it was filmed aboard a Su-24 bomber plane operated by Wagner.

Here are some of the latest images we have received from the frontline in Ukraine.

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6 Feb 202309.57 EST

Peter Beaumont

Russian forces are attempting to tie down Ukrainian forces with fighting in the eastern Donbas region as Moscow assembles additional troops there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, perhaps targeting the Luhansk region, Ukraine has said.

Weeks of intense fighting continued to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said.

Moscow’s forces are located in the Donetsk region, which with neighbouring Luhansk makes up the Donbas region, an industrial area bordering Russia. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, said:

The battles for the region are heating up. The Russians are throwing new units into the battle and eradicating our towns and villages.

Russian forces are “throwing” new units in the eastern Donbas region ahead of an expected offensive in the coming weeks, according to Ukrainian officials.

Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the battles for the Donetsk region are heating up, adding that Russian forces are “eradicating our towns and villages”.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said shelling there had subsided because “the Russians have been saving ammunition for a large-scale offensive”.

Weeks of intense fighting continue to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has tweeted his thanks to the Norwegian government and prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, for announcing a £6bn aid package over five years.

A senior Ukrainian official has said no personnel changes will be announced at the defence ministry this week, amid reports that the country’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, may be reshuffled into another government job amid a corruption scandal.

David Arakhamia, head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s parliamentary bloc, said there would not be an immediate reshuffle.

Posting to Telegram today, he wrote:

There will be no personnel changes in the defence sector this week.

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The position of Reznikov, one of Ukraine’s better-known figures internationally, has been under threat after it emerged the defence ministry paid twice or three times the supermarket price of food to supply troops on the frontline.

On Sunday, Arakhamia said the defence ministry would be headed up by Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. Reznikov, he added, would become minister of strategic industries, tasked with strengthening military-industrial cooperation, after a day of speculation about the defence minister’s future in Kyiv.

After Arakhamia’s statement there was no immediate comment from Reznikov, but earlier he had given a press conference, in which he suggested that his tenure as defence minister may not last much longer.

6 Feb 202308.23 EST

Donald McRae

As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, the world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk talks about the devastation of war and searching for signs of hope:

The walls were shaking and the dogs were hiding,” Usyk says quietly, a few hours after another wave of Russian bombs hits Kyiv on a mid-winter morning.

The world heavyweight champion is hard at work in his training camp outside the capital as he prepares for his planned unification bout with Tyson Fury in the coming months. But the greedy machinations of boxing matter little when set against the war in Ukraine.

Usyk, who looks lean and fit as he tugs thoughtfully at his close-cropped beard, wears a pristine white T-shirt. A beautiful black and white photograph of Muhammad Ali is printed on the front. The old promise of “float like a butterfly” ripples below the photo and Usyk grins while Ali dances across my Zoom screen. A friend gave him the shirt for his 36th birthday on 17 January, but a Ukrainian flag, signed with messages for the champion by soldiers on the frontline, hangs behind him in a reminder that he is on the edge of a war zone.

“I am outside Kyiv but my wife and my kids felt the attack this morning,” he says of the heavy shelling. “But, thank God, everything is fine with the family.”

Usyk used to be a joker, playing pranks in the gym and peppering interviews with quips, but he now carries the gravity of a country under siege. He leans forward, his head almost touching the screen, when I suggest it must be hard being away from his family when Kyiv is bombarded again.

“It’s not that difficult,” he says calmly.

The anxiety starts but people are prepared. They’re all thinking: ‘These dogs launched bombs or started shooting at us again.’ They are used to it so our people live with it. They go down into the bomb shelters where they can be safe.

Read the full story here:

Germany expects that it will soon have sufficient commitments from other EU countries to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, a German government spokesperson said.

Berlin has promised 14 of its own Leopard 2A6 tanks for Ukraine’s war effort, and has given partner countries permission to re-export further battle tanks to Kyiv. It hopes to assemble two full battalions of Leopard tanks in cooperation with other EU countries.

“Germany’s commitment stands,” the government spokesperson Wolfgang Büchner said today. He did not name any specific countries that had so far committed to sending the German-made tanks.

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The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, will not be meeting President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow this week, the Kremlin has said.

Grossi is expected to meet officials from the Russian state nuclear energy firm Rosatom and the foreign ministry, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Moscow expected a “substantive dialogue”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief is working to set up a safe zone around the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Grossi said he worried the world was becoming complacent about the considerable dangers posed by the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest, which has repeatedly come under fire in recent months.

The EU is preparing to host Volodymyr Zelenskiy at a summit in Brussels this week, according to a report.

The Ukrainian leader is also expected to address a special session of the European parliament, the Financial Times writes, citing people briefed on the plans.

The proposed plan is subject to security concerns that risk derailing Zelenskiy’s trip, the paper says.

It comes after Ukraine’s president hosted a summit with senior EU officials including the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the head of the European Council, Charles Michel.

Asked about the prospect of a visit to Brussels on Friday, Zelenskiy told reporters:

Frankly speaking, there are big risks if I go somewhere. This is true.

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