Tag: military

Are US military drills in Asia Pacific a veiled attempt to curb Chinese power?

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Recent US military activity in the Asia Pacific is on the rise, including drills in the Philippines and South Korea as well as a recent submarine deal struck between the US and Australia. China has meanwhile accused the US of encircling the country. FRANCE 24 speaks with an expert to shed light on the mounting tensions.

The US said Tuesday that it will hold the largest joint military exercises ever with the Philippines next month, which would include, for the first time, live-fire exercises in the disputed South China Sea and a simulated defence of a tiny Philippine island nearly 300 kilometres (190 miles) south of Taiwan. The announcement came on the heels of concerns voiced by China over similar military drills conducted by the US and South Korea on the Korean peninsula.  Washington and Seoul on Monday launched their largest joint military exercises in half a decade, provoking a harsh response from North Korea as it fired two missiles into waters off its east coast.

With tensions rising in the Asia Pacific, FRANCE 24 talked to Marc Julienne, head of China Research at the Centre for Asian Studies of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) to shed light on the current situation.

FRANCE 24: China has expressed concerns over US drilling in the Asia Pacific as well as the recent deal brokered by AUKUS, which would see the US supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday criticised the US for maintaining a Cold War mentality. Do you find the critique valid? Is the US looking to ‘contain’ China?

Marc Julienne: Chinese President Xi Jinping and his newly appointed Foreign Minister Qin Gangboth used severe language last week with regard to the US, condemning it for preserving a ‘cold war mentality’ and, for the first time, accusing it of deploying a ‘containment’ strategy vis-à-vis China. This is quite new in China’s political discourse, and while we can hear echoes of that in some American publications, the terminology is absent from US public discourse.

The term ‘containment’ is in itself quite controversial because it dates back to the Cold War era, the context of which completely differs from our current period. I can’t say whether the US is trying to ‘contain’ China or not, but we can nevertheless observe external factual changes: On the one hand, China is looking to break up the current world order and to conquer new territories as it gains more power. The country is aggressively expanding its military might, whether it is on the Himalayan border, in the South China Sea, East China Sea or regarding Taiwan. On the other hand, the US is seeking to maintain the current world order by reinforcing its security measures.

What we need to understand is that such actions are rarely one-sided and do not solely concern the US and China. Other countries in the Asia Pacific have also started to perceive China as a clear threat and have asked for the US to ramp up its forces in the region. Even the Philippines, which has since long maintained a rather ambivalent relationship with China and the US, has recently welcomed the addition of four US military bases.

To what extent do the US recent engagements in the Asia Pacific reflect a shift in focus from Europe despite the war in Ukraine? What is your take on the matter? Is the US leaving Europe to fend for itself in order to concentrate on China?

I don’t see that happening in the near future. The US has been the main arms supplier to Ukraine since the war broke out early last year and it has very recently pledged additional military aid to Ukraine. For now I don’t see the US disengaging from Europe. Nevertheless, worries over a potential US retreat from the region are quite legitimate. Countries in Europe, especially those in the centre and in the east with disputed territories, would not be able to fend for themselves in the case of an invasion. And such fears have been stoked high since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moreover, we have to remember that when the Ukraine war broke out, many were worried about the opposite case — that the US would withdraw its military bases from the Indo-Pacific region to focus on Russia and Ukraine. But that has clearly not been the case.

But of course we can’t exclude a scenario where the US decides to concentrate all its forces in Asia to counterbalance China. We saw a similar scenario happening when the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan to redeploy them in the Indo-Pacific region.

China’s Xi Jinping has vowed to ‘advance the process of reunification’ with Taiwan and has not ruled out achieving his goal by force as he recently took up his third term in office. North Korea meanwhile has launched several ballistic missiles threatening its southern neighbour. What role will Europe play if ever a war breaks out in the region?

[Contrary to popular belief], Europe’s role may not be as clear-cut as it may first appear. Since war is impossible to predict we can only hypothesise. In the unfortunate event that China tries to take Taiwan by force, Europe would first look to the US for leadership, whose intervention is not guaranteed! The US has strategically maintained an ambiguous attitude over the past few decades on whether or not it would provide military support in case of a Chinese invasion of the island, and Europe’s stance largely depends on that.

If the US is to intervene and lead a coalition with Japanese and Korean forces, then Europe would presumably show support as it condemns all unilateral changes to the status quo, a position that the United Nations also shares. The EU is likely to apply sanctions on China, similar to that imposed on Russia over the Ukraine war. Whether or not Europe would send troops, however, is an entirely different question.

I think perhaps a more interesting question is what will happen in case of an invasion of South Korea by North Korea. The US would undoubtedly intervene, but would China intervene as well on North Korea’s behalf? The two countries’ alliance being much less sturdy, it’s possible that China would choose to play the role of mediator instead of engaging in direct intervention. And I think that just goes to show how much weight China has in the global order.

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Macron’s Africa reset struggles to persuade

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Paul Taylor is a contributing editor at POLITICO.

PARIS — The bigger the humiliation, the more grandiloquent the relaunch. 

After a year that saw French forces conducting counterinsurgency operations against jihadist rebels hounded out of Mali and Burkina Faso by military coups, anti-colonialist street protests, and Russian disinformation and mercenaries, President Emmanuel Macron announced a fundamental overhaul of France’s Africa strategy. 

“Humility,” “partnership” and “investment” are now the keywords in a reset that Macron outlined in a speech he delivered before embarking on his 18th trip to Africa in just eight years. 

Many Africans were understandably skeptical as the French president took his new doctrine on a tour of Gabon, Angola, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — an eclectic mix of former French, Belgian and Portuguese colonies that have big economic potential, and are being heavily courted by Russia and China as well as Europe. 

“The days of la Françafrique are well and truly over,” Macron insisted in Gabon’s capital Libreville.  He was not the first president to promise an end to the postcolonial manipulation of African politics, with crony ties between the French elite and long-serving African autocrats.  

The French leader’s enunciation of a sea change in Franco-African ties sounded oddly like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s proclamation of a Zeitenwende — an epochal turning point in Berlin’s policy toward Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“We have reached the end of a cycle of French history in which military questions held preeminence in Africa,” Macron said, the first French president to be born after the end of colonial rule. Henceforth, “there will be no military bases as such,” but “new military partnerships” with African allies, and French forces on the continent will be focusing on training local troops. 

In a conscious effort to shed the mantle of paternalism and hard security, Macron built his four-day trip around the themes of saving African forests, developing agriculture, investing in African business and supporting a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. He also went clubbing in Kinshasa, beer in hand, with Congolese singer Fally Ipupa. 

He steered clear of France’s traditional West African backyard, where Paris’s counterinsurgency policy suffered its deepest setbacks.

“Our destiny is tied to the African continent. If we are able to seize this chance, we have the opportunity to anchor ourselves to the continent, which will increasingly be one of the youngest and most dynamic economic markets in the world, and one of the great centers of global growth in the decades to come,” Macron said. 

He was making a virtue of necessity, to say the least.  

By shrinking its military footprint without abandoning key footholds in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Djibouti, France hopes to avoid further forced retreats from the continent’s strategic corners. Then, referring to Russia’s Wagner mercenaries who have supplanted French forces in Mali and the Central African Republic, Macron said he was sure Africans would soon regret the paramilitary group’s presence.  

But small crowds of anti-French demonstrators in Libreville and Kinshasa were a reminder of France’s tarnished image among many young Africans, as well as accusations of political interference that dog Macron’s attempt at a new start.  

In Gabon, protesters accused the French leader of helping veteran President Ali Bongo’s reelection campaign — a charge he felt obliged to deny. And in the DRC, he faced both public criticism from President Felix Tshisekedi, as well as protests by opposition activists.  

If you’re France, in Africa, you simply can’t win. No one is going to take your professions of good faith, political neutrality, partnership and brotherly love at face value. 

Macron has arguably been the most progressive French president when it comes to Africa, officially acknowledging colonial France’s mistreatment of Algerians, and seeking an ever-elusive reconciliation. He has apologized in Rwanda for his country’s role in failing to prevent the 1994 genocide by Hutu militias against ethnic Tutsis. He has created a commission to investigate colonial massacres in Cameroon too.  

Macron has reached out to youngsters, civil society and start-ups, sometimes over the heads of African governments. He has agreed to scrap the CFA franc — the eight-nation West African currency tied to France — to be replaced by the Eco in 2027. He is the first French leader to have returned cultural treasures to Africa as well, sending a collection of statues to Benin in what is likely to set a precedent. 

Yet, though they make French nationalists’ blood boil, such gestures are too little, too late for many Africans. 

France would probably be best advised to channel its efforts instead under the more politically acceptable banner of the European Union, which is building a comprehensive partnership with the African Union — the key principles of which were outlined at a summit in Brussels in February 2022.  

As bad luck would have it, however, that budding relationship has been overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has monopolized the EU’s political and financial attention. 

Africans clearly see how the bloc — France included — has plowed billions of euros in military and financial assistance into Ukraine, while support for African peace and security efforts has been far more constrained. They also see how Ukraine has gained EU candidate status and been center stage at every summit, while Africa had to struggle to secure even belated help in procuring COVID-19 vaccines.  

Moreover, the war in Ukraine has added to food insecurity and an energy-price squeeze on the continent. For many Africans, Europe seems more concerned with blaming Russia than helping. 

Macron’s African reset is in many ways a halfway house — he admitted as much in his big speech. “We are held accountable for the past without having been totally convincing about the shape of our common future,” he said. 

The decision to rebrand the African bases as joint training ventures was itself reportedly a compromise between advisers who argued against yielding another inch to France’s adversaries, and others who want to shutter most outposts and refocus the armed forces on preparing for possible high-intensity warfare in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. 

While 61 percent of voters think France should stay in Africa because of its economic and security interests — as well as to help prevent mass migration to Europe — an Odoxa poll for Le Figaro showed that a similar majority is pessimistic about Franco-African ties, and doubtful of Macron’s ability to build a new relationship. 

This may not be the last Franco-African reset.



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Ukrainian forces cling to Bakhmut under severe Russian pressure

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Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Saturday has carried out an inspection of the front line in eastern Ukraine, according to the ministry, as fighting raged around the besieged city of Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces defending the eastern city are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces, British intelligence said. Read about the day’s events as they unfolded on our liveblog. All times Paris time (GMT+1).

This live page is no longer being updated. For more of our coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

6:35pm: Mourners commemorate death anniversary of 8 men killed in Bucha 

Clutching flowers and wiping away tears, relatives and friends of eight men executed by Russian forces during the occupation of the Ukrainian town of Bucha marked the first anniversary of the deaths.

The eight had set up a roadblock in an attempt to prevent Russian troops from advancing as they swept toward Kyiv at the start of their invasion. But they were captured, Ukrainian authorities say, and executed. 

Their bodies lay outside a building on Yablunska Street for a month, with relatives only able to collect them in April after Russian troops pulled out of Bucha.

Relatives gathered for the anniversary commemoration at the building where the bodies of the men were found. Photos of the victims were hung on the wall of the building between two Ukrainian flags. A wreath of red plastic roses and bouquets of blue and yellow flowers lean against the wall beneath the pictures.

Anna Levchenko, 81, kisses the picture of her grandson Andrii Matviichuk, during a ceremony marking the first anniversary of his death in Bucha, Ukraine, on March 4, 2023. © Thibault Camus, AP

 

6:14pm: Death toll in Zaporizhzhia strike rises to 11

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on Thursday that hit an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has risen to 11 after a woman’s body was found in the debris, according to the state emergency service.

One child was among those killed in Thursday’s early-morning strike on the five-storey residential building, the service said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Officials from the regional administration said in another post that a Russian S-300 missile had hit the building.

5:15pm:Ukrainians still fighting for Bakhmut, but for how long is an ‘open question’

Reporting from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, which lies west of Bakhmut, FRANCE 24 Gulliver Cragg says there’s little doubt that Bakhmut has been “practically surrounded” by the Russians. But, Cragg notes, “there’s a big difference of course between being ‘practically’ or ‘almost’ surrounded, and ‘fully’ surrounded.”

Cragg’s comments come a day after Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his fighters had “practically” encircled” Bakhmut, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict.

Ukrainian forces still have access to Bakhmut, said Cragg. “There are still various dirt roads that the Ukrainian forces can use to get in and out of the city – which have been used in recent days by two top Ukrainian commanders as a means of showing that, for the moment, they’re still there and they’re still fighting for Bakhmut. But for how long that can go on for clearly that does seem to be very much an open question,” said Cragg.


 

1:31pm: Fallen Ukrainian troops being sent back to ‘motherland’, says Wagner boss in video clip

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary force, has published another video, this one showing what he said were coffins containing bodies of Ukrainian soldiers being repatriated to territory held by Kyiv.

In the video, Prigozhin, clad in full military gear, said: “We are sending another shipment of Ukrainian army fighters home. They fought bravely, and perished. That’s why the latest truck will take them back to their motherland.”

The footage shows men in uniform nailing wooden coffins shut and loading them onto a truck.

The latest video came a day after Prigozhin released a clip on Friday claiming his group had “practically encircled” the easter Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. 

Prigozhin, whose Wagner Group has spearheaded Russia’s months-long assault on Bakhmut, has repeatedly praised the Ukrainian army as a worthy and capable adversary.

10:20am: Ukraine forces under increasingly severe Russian pressure defending Bakhmut, UK says

Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces, British military intelligence said on Saturday, with intense fighting taking place in and around the eastern city.

Russian artillery pounded the last routes out of Bakhmut on Friday, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged Ukrainian city and bring Moscow closer to its first major victory in half a year after the bloodiest battle of the war. Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city. A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was damaged by Russian tank shelling.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, said in a video Bakhmut was “practically surrounded” by his forces and Kyiv’s forces had only one road out left.

9:10am: Russia’s defence minister Shoigu pays rare visit inspecting troops on Ukraine front line

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has paid a rare visit to Russia’s forces, carrying out an inspection of the front line in eastern Ukraine, the ministry said Saturday, as fighting rages around the eastern city of Bakhmut.

In a statement published on Telegram, the ministry said “the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu, inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the Eastern Military District in the South Donetsk direction”, without specifying the exact place or time.

In video published by the ministry, Shoigu is seen awarding medals to Russian military personnel and touring a ruined town with the Eastern Military District’s commander, Colonel-General Rustam Muradov.

Russia’s top military chiefs have visited the front line in Ukraine only sparingly since Russia invaded the country in what it calls a “special military operation” a year ago.

6am: US attorney general in surprise visit to Ukraine, vows to hold ‘Russian war criminals accountable’

US Attorney General Merrick Garland made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Friday and vowed to hold “Russian war criminals accountable” for their actions. The visit was not announced ahead of time for security reasons.

“We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them,” Garland said. He went to Lviv in western Ukraine at the invitation of his Ukrainian counterpart to take part in the “United for Justice Conference”.

Garland told the conference the United States stood beside Ukraine’s war crimes investigators as they collect and catalogue evidence from blast sites that include hospitals, apartment buildings and schools, exhume mass graves and study human remains – “in order to tell the stories of those who no longer can”, according to a Justice Department transcript of his remarks.

Since the invasion began a year ago, Russia has been committing atrocities on the largest scale of any conflict since World War II, he said. The United States has signed an agreement with Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Romania “that will strengthen our efforts to hold Russian war criminals accountable”, he said.

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(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)

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Live: Drone strike hits west Ukraine as UN rights body debates war crimes probe

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A Russian drone attack early on Monday left two people dead and three more wounded in the western Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi as the UN Human Rights Council convened in Geneva amid calls for unity in condemning Moscow and extending a probe into war crimes committed in Ukraine. Follow our live blog for all the latest developments. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).

11:55am: Russia ‘paying a great deal of attention’ to Chinese peace plan

A Chinese peace plan on Ukraine that urges both sides to agree to a gradual de-escalation should be analysed in detail, taking the interests of all sides into account, the Kremlin has said.

China, which declared a “no limits” alliance with Russia shortly before Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine a year ago, called for a comprehensive ceasefire in Ukraine on Friday, touting its own peace plan.

“We are paying a great deal of attention to the plan of our Chinese friends,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. “Of course, the details need to be painstakingly analysed taking into account the interests of all the different sides. This is a very long and intense process.”

Peskov declined to comment on a US media report that China was considering transferring drones to Russia.

10:55am: Two killed in west Ukraine drone attack

The death toll from Russia’s early morning drone attack in Khmelnytskyi has risen to two, the mayor of the western Ukrainian city has said, adding that both victims were rescue workers.

“Unfortunately, we have another hospital death. Doctors failed to save the life of another hero – a rescuer,” Mayor Oleksandr Symchyshyn said in a social media post. Three other people were injured.

The Ukrainian armed forces said they shot down 11 out of 14 Iranian-made “Shaded” drones deployed by Moscow’s forces overnight. Nine were downed over the capital Kyiv, the head of the city’s military administration said, and there were no reported casualties or damage to infrastructure. 

The official, Sergiy Popko, said Russian forces were trying “to exhaust our air defences”, adding that the attack had come in two separate waves.

10:45am: UN chief blames Russia for ‘most massive violations of human rights’

Respect for human rights has gone into reverse, UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned at the start of the UN Human Right Council’s annual session in Geneva, noting that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is “under assault from all sides” 75 years after its signing.

“Some governments chip away at it. Others use a wrecking ball,” Guterres said, singling out Russia’s actions since it invaded Ukraine a year ago.

The “Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most massive violations of human rights” being witnessed in the world today, he added. “It has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement.” 

9:40am: Turkey’s NATO talks with Sweden and Finland to resume on March 9

Turkey says talks with Sweden and Finland regarding their NATO membership bids will resume on March 9, after being suspended in January in the wake of a Koran-burning protest in Stockholm.

The Nordic countries applied last year to join the North Atlantic defence alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine, but Sweden in particular has faced unexpected objections from Turkey.

Ankara accuses Stockholm of harbouring what it considers members of terrorist groups, and has demanded their extradition as a step towards giving Sweden’s NATO membership its green light.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a press conference in Ankara on Monday that Sweden was still not fulfilling its obligations under a memorandum signed at a NATO summit in Madrid last June, even though NATO’s secretary-general and other allies have said Stockholm has changed its legislation.

“Unfortunately, we have not seen satisfactory steps from Sweden on the implementation of the Madrid memorandum,” Cavusoglu said. “It is not possible for us to say ‘yes’ to Sweden’s NATO bid before we see these steps.”

9:35am: Drone attack kills one, injures four in western Ukraine

A Russian drone attack has killed one person and wounded four more in Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine, the city’s mayor Oleksandr Symchyshyn has said.

Earlier, the Ukrainian armed forces said they had shot down 11 out of 14 drones launched by Moscow’s forces overnight.

8:05am: Russian influence looms over Macron’s Africa trip

French President Emmanuel Macron flies to Africa later today in a bid to counter Russian efforts to dislodge France from the continent, after Paris suffered a series of military and political setbacks in its former sphere of influence.

Macron will visit three African nations around the Congo basin as well as Angola, with the focus of the trip being ostensibly away from France’s troubled former colonies in the Sahel, where anti-French sentiment is on the rise.

Ahead of the trip, Macron is expected to spell out his new African policy in a speech and press conference at the Élysée palace, which FRANCE 24 will broadcast live at 5pm Paris time (GMT+1).

The tour comes just over a week after Burkina Faso booted out French troops and ended a military accord that allowed France to fight insurgents in the West African nation. France also withdrew its forces from Mali last year after the junta there started working with Russian military contractors.

Russia’s Wagner Group has also deployed in the Central African Republic, prompting fears of a domino effect in Paris at a time Western countries are trying to lobby the global south against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

5:30am: Belarusian partisans say Russian military aircraft damaged near Minsk

A Russian A-50 surveillance military aircraft was damaged in a drone attack at an airfield near the Belarus capital of Minsk on Sunday, Belarus partisans and members of the exiled opposition said.

“Those were drones. The participants of the operation are Belarusian,” Aliaksandr Azarov, leader of Belarusian anti-government organization BYPOL, was quoted as saying on the organisation’s Telegram messaging app and on the Poland-based Belsat news channel.

“They are now safe, outside the country.”

Belsat is a Polish broadcaster focused on Belarusian news that Minsk has branded extremist. BYPOL, which includes former law enforcement officers who support opposition politicians, has been branded a terrorist organisation.

Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said in a post on Twitter it was the most successful act of sabotage since the beginning of 2022.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. There was no immediate response from the defence ministries of Russia and Belarus to a request for comment.

3:08am: Russia in firing line of top UN rights meet

Russia’s war in Ukraine looms large as the UN Human Rights Council meets Monday, with calls for unity in condemning Moscow and extending a probe into war crimes in the conflict.

Days after the United Nations General Assembly in New York voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine, Moscow’s war is expected to dominate the opening of the top UN rights body’s main annual session in Geneva.

“We’re looking for this session to show, as the UN General Assembly showed … that the world stands side-by-side with Ukraine,” British ambassador Simon Manley said at an event Friday marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The meeting, which is due to last a record six weeks, will be the first presided over by new UN rights chief Volker Turk, who kicks the session off early Monday.

UN chief Antonio Guterres will also address the council on the first day, while nearly 150 ministers and heads of state and government will speak, virtually or in person, during the four-day high-level segment.

Among them will be the top diplomats of the United States, China, Ukraine and Iran.

8:56pm: US, Poland and Germany may hold joint manoeuvres, minister says

Washington is in talks with Berlin and Warsaw to hold joint military manoeuvres in Poland in response to Russia‘s threat to the eastern border of the NATO alliance, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Sunday.

Exercises were being “considered”, Pistorius told public broadcaster ARD, without confirming or adding any details “for now”.

Military manoeuvres in a country bordering Ukraine, invaded one year ago by Russia, would send a “very clear” signal to NATO allies “but also to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin”, he added.

NATO “is far from being as weak as (Putin) has believed for a long time”, said Pistorius.

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Key battles in the Ukraine war: from Kyiv’s stand to the Kharkiv counterattack

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Russia expected it would quickly seize control of Ukraine at the outset of the invasion, as did many Western observers. But Ukraine fought back with remarkable tenacity and skill, boosted by Western weapons – and the front lines have shifted dramatically since Russian troops moved in on the northern, southern and eastern flanks. FRANCE 24 looks back on some of the decisive battles in the first year of Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

One year on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the situation looks radically different from the one many observers feared and predicted. As things now stand, the war is in a state of grinding stalemate as Ukraine looks to regain its territory in the south and east – after Kyiv made significant gains in the second half of 2022, in a remarkable set of counteroffensives.

© Studio Graphique France Médias Monde

To illuminate the dynamics at play in these key battles, FRANCE 24 spoke to Gustav Gressel, a Russian military specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, and Sim Tack, an analyst at US military consultancy Force Analysis.

When Russia launched its invasion, the consensus amongst analysts was that a quick Russian victory would “depend on it taking control of the skies and then capitalising on it”, Gressel noted. But Moscow failed to achieve aerial mastery and that had “significant consequences for what happened after”.

The Russians followed the first rule in gaining dominance in the skies – using intensive electronic jamming to blind Ukrainian air defences, thereby making it much easier to bomb targets like airbases. But they were “careless in assessing their own bombing, failing to realise that they were causing a lot of damage but little destruction”, Gressel said.

The Russian military was then too hasty – sending in ground troops before the aerial offensive had achieved its objectives. “In order to launch their ground invasion, they had to stop jamming electric devices, because otherwise they’d prevent their own troops from communicating with each other,” Gressel pointed out. And at this moment, the Ukrainian forces were able to recover and regroup their anti-aircraft defences.

The Russian army tried to win big quickly by moving towards the Ukrainian capital on February 24. But this attempt failed as the Ukrainians “rapidly organised an effective defence, even as they were taken by surprise”, Tack said.

Russia’s attempt to seize Hostomel airport on February 24 was symbolic in this regard. “They sent in special forces by helicopter, as well as deploying traditional transport planes, with motorised units then joining them from Belarus,” Gressel explained.

But the Ukrainians pushed back the transport planes – so the troops arriving by helicopter were isolated and vulnerable. “The tanks were fast, but not fast enough to assist these units,” as Gressel put it.

Russia’s failure to cross the Boug River at Voznesensk, northwest of Kherson and Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, “marked the end of its hopes of taking Odesa”, Tack said. Russian forces had already tried unsuccessfully to cross the river at Mykolaiv. So they rushed north as a plan B, hoping to traverse it at a smaller city like Voznesensk.

“Russia tried to copy what the Americans did in Iraq in 2003, sending small units forward to seize targets quickly,” Tack noted. But they lacked the air support US forces benefitted from during that invasion – and that made all the difference for the Ukrainian defenders.

So this Russian strategy ended up backfiring because it “stretched the Russian army and gave Ukrainian troops more time to regroup between the two waves of attacks”, Tack explained.

Ukraine’s second-biggest city, historically Russian-speaking Kharkiv lies just 40 km away from Russia – all factors that made it a prime target for the invasion. Kharkiv is also a “gateway to central Ukraine” from Moscow’s perspective, Tack pointed out.

The Russians tried to seize Kharkiv in one day on February 24. But the Ukrainian defence held out for months before pushing the Russians back, even amid intense Russian air attacks.

“This battle proved that the Russian army finds urban warfare hard, especially in large cities like Kharkiv,” Tack observed. “That said, urban warfare is one of the most complicated forms of combat, and even the US hasn’t come up with easy solutions to the challenges it poses.”

Nevertheless, Russia’s failure to seize Kharkiv remains quite an indictment of its military because it sent “some of its most elite units there”, as Tack pointed out – and the significant losses incurred there mean those units were “not going to be where they were needed” elsewhere on the front as Russia’s struggles intensified later in 2022.

The strategic port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine was a major Russian target. “Controlling Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a bridge between the Donbas region and its gains in the Kherson region further west,” Tack noted.

But the battle for Mariupol was far more difficult and lengthy than Moscow envisaged. The Russians first occupied the port, then moved to the city centre – needing to defeat one pocket of resistance after another in gruelling combat.

The most famous symbol of Ukraine’s fierce resistance in this merciless battle – a symbol that will doubtless go down as iconic in the history books – was the Azovstal steel factory, where Ukrainian troops continued their doomed, heroic resistance even as the rest of Mariupol had fallen.

And it was in Mariupol that Russia “began its strategy of bombing cities intensively when an infantry strategy was no longer working”, Tack pointed out.

The Donets River is seen as a natural dividing line between northern and southern Ukraine – and in light of this strategic position, the fighting to control it can be seen as the “great battle that decided the course of the war” so far, Tack said.

Russia’s unsuccessful attempts to cross the river – first at Izium in March and then at various other crossing points between Izium and Lyssychansk over the following months – contributed a great deal to the stalemate at the front.

It was at this point that the Russo-Ukrainian War went from being a war of movement to a war of position.

Russia’s repeated failure to cross the Donets therefore underlines “the power of geography”, Tack said. “Even with all the equipment of modern conflict, crossing a river is still a very complex operation, requiring perfect co-ordination,” he noted.

The Russians learned this the hard way – incurring heavy losses of men and matériel during failed river crossing attempts.

uhuh
uhuh © Studio Graphique France Médias Monde

The fierce fighting that erupted around the town of Popsana starting in March illustrated once more the Russian army’s modus operandi during the war’s opening stage – using a “spearhead to try and break through enemy lines”, as Gressel described it.

“The Russian military used a lot of artillery to break the lines of defence and open a path for the infantry,” Gressel said.

The Ukrainians found it difficult to counteract against these artillery barrages in Popsana. But at the time the Russian army’s coordination problems meant this breakthrough “didn’t create any major changes to the front line, because the infantry didn’t follow through quickly enough”, Gressel said.

Yet the Russians are still trying to create a major breakthrough in this area, after slowly advancing towards Bakhmut. The battle for Popsana “still defines the dynamics of the war today, because it opened up the route to Bakhmut for the Russians”, Tack noted.

The second wave of ferocious fighting for control of Kharkiv was the “perfect case” of a combatant “eking out an advantage using limited resources”, Gressel said. 

Outnumbered and totally reliant on its Western allies for weapons, Ukraine managed to mount a remarkable counteroffensive in Kharkiv region – thus forcing Moscow to “choose between acknowledging they were losing or announcing a military mobilisation”, Gustav said. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on September 21 a “partial mobilisation” of civilian reservists. 

Ukraine made deft use of the art of trickery ahead of this offensive – making it look like they would launch a major attack around Kherson, prompting Russia to redeploy its troops to the south.  

Then as soon as the Russian line of defence “started looking stretched around Kharkiv, the Ukrainian army struck there”, Tack concluded.

This article was adapted from the original in French.

Ukraine, one year on
Ukraine, one year on © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

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The West still doesn’t know what winning looks like in Ukraine

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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

More than anything else, the Munich Security Conference was founded to foster dialogue between adversaries. Yet, this year’s three-day gabfest was focused on exchanges between allies and friends rather than foes, and in formal sessions, there were earnest colloquies about Russia’s war on Ukraine and what next steps should be taken to help Kyiv.

Ahead of the gathering, some had warned that Munich would thus likely turn into an echo chamber of the like-minded this year. But it didn’t — certainly not in the margins or informal meetings. And it still remains unclear whether Ukraine’s partners are, in fact, singing the same song of unity.

Munich gave us the “chance to sense the mood, especially on the most important questions like how the war is going, and how our support is going, and how long support is going to last,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told POLITICO in an exclusive interview.

But, at the same time, the conference reinforced rather than eased some of his anxieties — as well as those of his Baltic compatriots — about the staying power of all Ukraine’s Western partners. And this is because ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion — despite unprecedented Western sanctions and massive arms supplies — the allies haven’t really agreed on any clear war aims.

Ukraine, of course, has been consistent about theirs — namely, the restoration of all sovereign territory including Crimea, Russian war reparations and security guarantees. But in April and May, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi all floated ceasefire balloons.

Macron and Scholz have since hardened their talk. Last week in Munich, Macron said the time isn’t right for dialogue, and he hasn’t spoken with Putin since September. Meanwhile, Germany’s chancellor quipped in his speech on Friday about how laggardly the allies have been in supplying Leopard tanks. “Those who can send such battle tanks should really do so now,” Scholz said, relishing the cheeky role reversal.

Yet peace balloons still continue to be floated, even more surreptitiously than China’s spy blimps.

Did CIA Director William Burns waft one up at the Ankara meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Naryshkin in November? Two Ukrainian officials say he did. Asking not to be identified for this article, as they haven’t been authorized to discuss the issue with the media, the officials also confirmed a report that in January, Burns had urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make as much battlefield headway as quickly as he could, because the scale of military support could start falling off.

Burns’ warning came after predictions that the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Congress would soon set out to reduce support. And a Zelenskyy adviser told POLITICO, Kyiv is worried that some in President Joe Biden’s administration would be happy to use Congress as an excuse to wind down military aid and encourage Ukraine to agree to pare down its war aims.

“I think both on Capitol Hill and in the administration, there are people who are looking to calibrate security assistance to incentivize the Ukrainians to cut some sort of deal, I’m afraid,” the adviser said.

Of course, that may go against Biden’s promise during his surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday that the U.S. will continue to back Ukraine for “as long as it takes” — but without defined war aims, even that presidential pledge could be blown off course, the adviser confided.

Meanwhile, for Landsbergis, the failure to not just clearly define Western partners’ war aims but even debate them in earnest has been a crucial omission. And this failure to discuss outcomes and objectives is leaving room for those who waver to waver even more.

“My main question is why haven’t we ever had a conversation about the end goal? The only discussions or ideas that get floated around are about negotiations and peace processes — and all that makes a lot of people in my part of Europe quite nervous. Okay, so we talk about victory, and we talk about standing with Ukraine to the very end — but let’s also talk about this.”

According to Landsbergis, military experts know exactly what’s needed to finish the job. “It’s mathematics,” he said.

But without having agreed on objectives, everything is ad hoc — without a real attempt to match equipment and munitions, missiles and armor — and it’s left to Ukraine to push for whatever it can secure. “So, we ambiguously commit to Ukrainian victory, but do not go into detail,” he added.

Interestingly, during a similarly fateful February in 1941, Britain’s Winston Churchill gave a take-stock speech to the House of Commons, noting that “In wartime, there is a lot to be said for the motto: ‘Deeds, not words.’ All the same, it is a good thing to look around from time to time and take stock, and certainly our affairs have prospered in several directions during these last four or five months, far better than most of us would have ventured to hope.”

Britain had been receiving some military aid from the U.S. at the time, and much like Ukraine today, it was on a just-in-time basis at best.

Landsbergis sees the current situation as similar.

“We’re approaching a very important period,” he said. Without defined war aims, he and other Baltic and Central European leaders are eager to at least secure defined arms and resupply commitments for the months ahead. “Let’s commit for the summer. Let’s commit for the next wave. Let’s commit for ammunition, let’s commit for additional tanks, let’s commit for additional howitzers,” he called.

The foreign minister also said that there are “people saying, look, ‘Russia has already lost, has lost strategically,’ and on this, I would completely disagree.” For him, a strategic loss means Russia undergoing a historic change and being “unable to continue the way that it has been for decades,” even if that means it creates the conditions for the breakup of the Russian Federation — although Landsbergis isn’t advocating for that as a war aim.

Rather, his point is that back when the Soviet Union broke up, there were leaders in the West urging the Baltic states and Ukraine not to declare independence, as they were fearful of all the instability and repercussions it might trigger. “People were so afraid, they couldn’t imagine a world without the Soviet Union,” he said.

And likewise, some now worry about the repercussions of the war leading to turbulence inside Russia and even its breakup. “So, should we stop? Should we ask the Ukrainians to put a moratorium on the regaining of their territory?” Landsbergis asked.

“That’s impossible.”



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Will a deal with the UK allow Kyiv to make Western weapons in Ukraine?

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British arms executives have reportedly travelled to Kyiv for discussions to set up joint ventures to manufacture British arms and military vehicles in Ukraine. Analysts agree that such a deal is on the cards, with the UK as Ukraine’s leading partner due to their close ties – and that such an agreement would ease strains on weapons supplies to Kyiv. But analysts do not expect it to be a short-term game changer, especially as long as Russian air strikes would threaten any Ukrainian weapons factories.

Executives from UK defence companies are in talks with Kyiv on allowing British-designed arms and military vehicles to be manufactured in Ukraine under licence, The Telegraph reported.

Such a deal would take an already close defence relationship up a gear. Britain has been notably generous in supplying arms to Ukraine, as the second-largest weapons donor to Kyiv. This munificence has been well appreciated in Ukraine, as demonstrated by the Ukrainian soldiers shouting “God Save The Queen!” while firing British-donated NLAW missiles at Russian tanks in the early stages of the war. 

The British government has also underlined its support for Ukraine with two trips by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a visit by current PM Rishi Sunak soon after he entered Downing Street – all to great fanfare in Kyiv.

Anglo-Ukrainian special relationship

While The Telegraph reported that weapons firms from other European countries are also conducting talks with Kyiv on potential licencing deals, analysts expect Ukraine to put the UK first.

“The UK is the leading candidate because of the very close military co-operation between Britain and Ukraine that started under Johnson – who remains very popular in Ukraine – and which has continued under Sunak,” said Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist in the Russo-Ukrainian War at Glasgow University.

Of course, Britain is far from the only European country to send Ukraine weapons. Germany announced in late January it would send Ukraine Leopard tanks, considered especially well-suited to winter warfare. But this U-turn followed months of Berlin causing Kyiv’s pique by refusing its demands for Leopards – and it came more than a week after Britain became the first Western country to agree to send Ukraine tanks by announcing it would give Challengers to Kyiv. 

Ukraine was similarly unimpressed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement in June that “we must not humiliate” Russia. So when Macron hosted his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky at the Élysée Palace on Wednesday evening, Zelensky needed to “make it clear that he understands Macron is fully on board”, FRANCE 24 International Affairs Editor Angela Diffley observed.

Tellingly, Zelensky’s late-night dinner with Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was squeezed into his schedule at the last minute after he chose London for his second foreign trip after December’s sojourn in Washington – with Paris sending hasty invitations as Zelensky enjoyed the red carpet treatment at Downing Street, Westminster Hall and Buckingham Palace.

Indeed, comparing the UK to Germany and France fuelled Ukraine’s desire to prioritise Britain as a weapons manufacturing partner, Aliyev said: “When it comes to other European states, Germany only recently started supplying significant amounts of heavy weaponry – and not sufficient amounts for Ukraine – while France has not supplied weapons with the same level of eagerness as the UK,” he put it.

US probably ‘already given approval’

But for all the strength of the Anglo-Ukrainian relationship, there is no doubt that Washington is Kyiv’s all-important partner. The US hegemon is Ukraine’s biggest weapons supplier by far, although the White House has at times underlined there is no blank cheque for Kyiv, as it does not want Ukraine to escalate the conflict to the point of risking World War III. When Zelensky visited the White House, President Joe Biden was notably firm in his refusal to send Ukraine US long-range ATACM missiles, which would be able to hit targets deep within Russia.

So getting the US onside is crucial for any Ukrainian plans to make Western-designed weapons on its soil. This will have factored into Kyiv’s choice of London as its foremost partner for the venture, said Jeff Hawn, a non-resident fellow at US geopolitical research centre the New Lines Institute: “The special relationship between the US and the UK will likely have featured in their calculations because getting the UK on board is a way of facilitating the US’s involvement,” he said.

In any case, it looks likely that the US has “already given its approval” for a UK-Ukraine weapons licensing deal, Aliyev said. Manufacturing Western-designed weapons on Ukrainian territory would align with Washington’s priorities – most obviously because, like its NATO allies, the US has been running down its stocks to aid Ukraine far more quickly than its defence contractors can replenish them. Indeed, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Monday that the alliance must “ramp up” ammunition production amid depleted stockpiles.

The possible deal with British firms is the “kind of thing Washington wants to see”, Hawn underlined. “It would integrate Ukraine into the Western defence sphere and make it more self-sufficient, when arming Ukraine has stretched the US’s own stockpiles far further than it would have liked.”

Having Western arms produced closer to the front lines would also “ease quite a lot the logistical burden” inherent in getting plentiful American weapons to the other side of Europe, Aliyev added.

“But the US is not likely to share with Ukraine the classified technology behind some of its most sophisticated weapons, such as military drones,” Aliyev cautioned. Any deal to make Western-designed arms in Ukraine will “probably involve things like artillery and armoured vehicles,” he said. “It should not necessarily be seen as an escalation of the conflict but primarily as a step to simplify logistics.”

‘Outstripped in arms race’

In light of this, a weapons licensing agreement would not be a “game changer” for Ukraine, Aliyev emphasised. But it would still proffer significant benefits – experts agree that anything allowing Ukraine to get its hands on more weapons would be invaluable for its military effort.

The Ukrainians “could gain a lot by having Western-quality weapons on their own soil without having to depend on these infrequent deliveries by their Western partners”, Aliyev noted.

Run-down ammunition supplies are one of Kyiv’s most pressing concerns, with Ukraine and its partners resorting to far-flung countries like South Korea and Pakistan as sources of artillery munitions. And Russia has a long history of using overwhelming artillery barrages to prevail militarily – a tactic going back to the Tsarist era; one Moscow most recently deployed successfully in the Battle of Sieverodonetsk in eastern Ukraine last June. 

“At this moment Ukraine is still significantly outstripped by Russia in their arms race,” Aliyev pointed out – and not just in terms of heavy weapons like artillery. “Russia is still far ahead of Ukraine in terms of its numbers of tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters and fighter jets. It will take Ukraine quite a while to catch up – although it depends on what happens with Russia’s military weapons construction, which is suffering from a lack of components imported from the West; it still gets such imports from China but they are not on the same level.”

‘High risk’

Making weapons could be highly profitable as well as a military boon for Ukraine, which from an economic angle looks well-suited to ramping up defence manufacturing: the Soviet Union’s over-industrialised economy left it with ample infrastructure, before the Ukrainian economy’s under-performance after the collapse of communism left it with lots of spare capacity.

“Ukraine’s had an extensive military-industrial complex during the USSR, which suffered highly after the Cold War, as it lost its major customer and was then looted by oligarchs – but it still has very good long-term material for a military-industrial base,” Hawn said. A licensing deal with a country like the UK would be a “great opportunity” for Ukraine’s war-battered economy, Aliyev added.

However, the idea of all that defence industry infrastructure at work in Ukraine points to the biggest question hanging over any licensing deal: any such factories would be within the range of Russian air strikes.

“It would be high risk to have a Western company – when talking about the UK it looks like we’re talking about [the biggest British defence company] BAE Systems – having factories on the ground in Ukraine,” Hawn put it. “They would be heavily defended, but Russia is deploying systems that can reach everywhere within Ukraine, even if they’re not always very accurate.”

Meanwhile Ukraine’s manufacturing infrastructure is not so well suited to complex defence projects, which typically take a few years to become operational. “Ukraine is well-suited to manufacturing simple systems like ammunition relatively quickly, but high-tech equipment is more of a long-term prospect,” Hawn said.

So analysts expect Ukraine to concentrate on more low-tech forms of equipment to start with, before building up to more advanced production if the war progresses sufficiently in its favour. 

Ukrainian manufacturing may well have to start just outside its territory, with workers commuting to a neighbouring ally. “I would expect Ukrainian production to start in Poland near the border and then moved to Ukraine when it becomes safer as the conflict moves closer to completion, though there is still the opportunity to have smaller-scale production on Ukrainian soil, as it would be easier to conceal and move around,” Aliyev said.  “Then at a later stage of the war we can expect to see full-scale, more high-tech production on Ukrainian soil,” he concluded.

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Heads roll in Ukraine graft purge, but defense chief Reznikov rejects rumors he’s out

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KYIV — Heads are rolling in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s expanding purge against corruption in Ukraine, but Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov is denying rumors that he’s destined for the exit — a move that would be viewed as a considerable setback for Kyiv in the middle of its war with Russia.

Two weeks ago, Ukraine was shaken by two major corruption scandals centered on government procurement of military catering services and electrical generators. Rather than sweeping the suspect deals under the carpet, Zelenskyy launched a major crackdown, in a bid to show allies in the U.S. and EU that Ukraine is making a clean break from the past.

Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a watchdog, said Zelenskyy needed to draw a line in the sand: “Because even when the war is going on, people saw that officials are conducting ‘business as usual’. They saw that corrupt schemes have not disappeared, and it made people really angry. Therefore, the president had to show he is on the side of fighting against corruption.”

Since the initial revelations, the graft investigations have snowballed, with enforcers uncovering further possible profiteering in the defense ministry. Two former deputy defense ministers have been placed in pre-trial detention.

Given the focus on his ministry in the scandal, speculation by journalists and politicians has swirled that Reznikov — one of the best-known faces of Ukraine’s war against the Russian invaders — is set to be fired or at least transferred to another ministry.

But losing such a top name would be a big blow. At a press conference on Sunday, Reznikov dismissed the claims about his imminent departure as rumors and said that only Zelenskyy was in a position to remove him. Although Reznikov admits the anti-corruption department at his ministry failed and needs reform, he said he was still focused on ensuring that Ukraine’s soldiers were properly equipped.

“Our key priority now is the stable supply of Ukrainian soldiers with all they need,” Reznikov said during the press conference.

Despite his insistence that any decision on his removal could only come from Zelenskyy, Reznikov did still caution that he was ready to depart — and that no officials would serve in their posts forever.

The speculation about Reznikov’s fate picked up on Sunday when David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s affiliated Servant of the People party faction in the parliament, published a statement saying Reznikov would soon be transferred to the position of minister for strategic industries to strengthen military-industrial cooperation. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, current head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, would head the Ministry of Defense, Arakhamia said.

However, on Monday, Arakhamia seemed to row back somewhat, and claimed no reshuffle in the defense ministry was planned for this week. Mariana Bezuhla, deputy head of the national security and defense committee in the Ukrainian parliament, also said that the parliament had decided to postpone any staff decisions in the defense ministry as they consider the broader risks for national defense ahead of another meeting of defense officials at the U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany and before an expected upcoming Russian offensive.  

Zelenskyy steps in

The defense ministry is not the only department to be swept up in the investigations. Over the first days of February, the Security Service of Ukraine, State Investigation Bureau, and Economic Security Bureau conducted dozens of searches at the customs service, the tax service and in local administrations. Officials of several different levels were dismissed en masse for sabotaging their service during war and hurting the state.     

“Unfortunately, in some areas, the only way to guarantee legitimacy is by changing leaders along with the implementation of institutional changes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on February 1. “I see from the reaction in society that people support the actions of law enforcement officers. So, the movement towards justice can be felt. And justice will be ensured.” 

Yuriy Nikolov, founder of the Nashi Groshi (Our Money) investigative website, who broke the story about the defense ministry’s alleged profiteering on food and catering services for soldiers in January, said the dismissals and continued searches were first steps in the right direction.

“Now let’s wait for the court sentences. It all looked like a well-coordinated show,” Nikolov told POLITICO.  “At the same time, it is good that the government prefers this kind of demonstrative fight against corruption, instead of covering up corrupt officials.”

Still, even though Reznikov declared zero tolerance for corruption and admitted that defense procurement during war needs reform, he has still refused to publish army price contract data on food and non-secret equipment, Nikolov said.

During his press conference, Reznikov insisted he could not reveal sensitive military information during a period of martial law as it could be used by the enemy. “We have to maintain the balance of public control and keep certain procurement procedures secret,” he said.

Two deputies down

Alleged corruption in secret procurement deals has, however, already cost him two of his deputies.  

Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who oversaw logistical support for the army, tendered his resignation in January following a scandal involving the purchase of military rations at inflated prices. In his resignation letter, Shapovalov asked to be dismissed in order “not to pose a threat to the stable supply of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a result of a campaign of accusations related to the purchase of food services.”

Another of Reznikov’s former deputies, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who managed defense procurement in the ministry until December, was also arrested over accusations he lobbied for a purchase of 3,000 poor-quality bulletproof vests for the army worth more than 100 million hryvnias (€2.5 million), the Security Service of Ukraine reported.  If found guilty he faces up to eight years in prison. The director of the company that supplied the bulletproof vests under the illicit contract has been identified as a suspect by the authorities and now faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.

Both ex-officials can be released on bail.  

Another unnamed defense ministry official, a non-staff adviser to the deputy defense minister of Ukraine, was also identified as a suspect in relation to the alleged embezzlement of 1.7 billion hryvnias (€43 million) from the defense budget, the General Prosecutors Office of Ukraine reported.  

When asked about corruption cases against former staffers, Reznikov stressed people had to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Reputational risk

At the press conference on Sunday, Reznikov claimed that during his time in the defense ministry, he managed to reorganize it, introduced competition into food supplies and filled empty stocks.

However, the anti-corruption department of the ministry completely failed, he admitted. He argued the situation in the department was so unsatisfactory that the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption gave him an order to conduct an official audit of employees. And it showed the department had to be reorganized.

“At a closed meeting with the watchdogs and investigative journalists I offered them to delegate people to the reloaded anti-corruption department. We also agreed to create a public anti-corruption council within the defense ministry,” Reznikov said.

Nikolov was one of the watchdogs attending the closed meeting. He said the minister did not bring any invoices or receipts for food products for the army, or any corrected contract prices to the meeting. Moreover, the minister called the demand to reveal the price of an egg or a potato “an idiocy” and said prices should not be published at all, Nikolov said in a statement. Overpriced eggs were one of the features of the inflated catering contracts that received particular public attention.

Reznikov instead suggested creating an advisory body with the public. He would also hold meetings, and working groups, and promised to provide invoices upon request, the journalist added.

“So far, it looks like the head of state, Zelenskyy, has lost patience with the antics of his staff, but some of his staff do not want to leave their comfort zone and are trying to leave some corruption options for themselves for the future,” Nikolov said.

Reznikov was not personally accused of any wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies.

But the minister acknowledged that there was reputational damage in relation to his team and communications. “This is a loss of reputation today, it must be recognized and learned from,” he said. At the same time, he believed he had nothing to be ashamed of: “My conscience is absolutely clear,” he said.



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US secures key military deal with the Philippines to counter Beijing’s growing regional influence

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The Philippines signed an agreement with the United States on Thursday that will allow American soldiers free access to four of its new military bases at a time of growing unease in the Indo-Pacific region over China’s burgeoning influence.

The deal, which was sealed during a February 1 visit to Manila by the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, means more US troops near China and would enable Washington to better monitor Chinese movements in the disputed South China Sea and around Taiwan.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr granted the US army access to four additional military bases, mainly in the north of the archipelago. American soldiers, who already have access to five Philippine military bases, would also use these bases for joint training, storing equipment and supplies and building facilities, but not to establish a permanent presence.

Back to pro-Washington

The benefit of this military agreement for Washington may seem obvious: “It allows, first of all, to complete the military encirclement of China in the China Sea region. In the north, the United States can use the American base in Okinawa, Japan, and the bases in South Korea, while in the south, American power can now be asserted from the bases in the Philippines,” said Danilo delle Fave, a specialist in security issues in Asia and associate researcher at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) in Verona, an international group of experts in international security issues.

More importantly, it signals a return to a pro-Washington stance for a country that occupies a key geostrategic position at a time when the US and China are waging a war of influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The US administration can “finally say again that it can count on the Philippines in the event of a conflict with Beijing”, said Tom Smith, an expert on the Philippines and security issues in Southeast Asia at Portsmouth University.

Historically, the archipelago has had a love-hate relationship with the US. On paper, Manila is Washington’s oldest regional ally by virtue of a military cooperation agreement dating back to 1951.

But the reality is far more complex. Firstly, because of serious issues linked to the huge US-owned military bases – handed over in the early 1990s – that damaged the reputation of the US military. “There were cases of sex trafficking and prostitution that have left their mark,” Smith said.

Nor was the Philippines of particular strategic importance to the US in the East-West confrontation that dominated the Cold War years.

But Washington again began to make diplomatic overtures towards Manila “after the September 11 attacks, because the Philippines was viewed as a potentially useful ally in the fight against Islamist terrorism”, Smith said. The US army started training Filipino soldiers to better fight the Abu Sayyaf terrorist movement, which has a strong presence in the southern Philippine islands.

A bridge between regions

Since then, the Philippines’ strategic value has only increased. The country has “regained the same importance as it had during the Second World War”, said delle Fave. At that time the Philippines was the main land barrier between Asia and the United States. During the Second World War it blocked the way to Japan, whereas today it limits the scope of China’s operations.

In the eyes of both Washington and Beijing, “the Philippines is a bridge between the two regions – America and Asia – and whoever is favoured by Manila can assert themselves more easily on one side of the Pacific or the other”, delle Fave explained.

Under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte between 2016 and 2022, the US watched nervously as its oldest Asian “ally” edged closer to China. The controversial former Philippine leader openly courted Beijing, proclaiming his ideological allegiance to the Chinese regime, while repeatedly criticising former US president Barack Obama.

Duterte offered his allegiances to Beijing in exchange for some promises of investment in infrastructure and the abandonment of Chinese claims to the Spratly Islands, which have been at the heart of Sino-Philippine tensions since the 1990s.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has led the Philippines since June 2022, had pursued a similar foreign policy strategy and sought to “deepen collaboration with Beijing” when he visited there in early January.

Into the arms of the Americans

But just three weeks later, the Philippine government made an unexpected 180° turn by signing a new military agreement with the US. “The failure of Duterte’s diplomatic approach is essentially due to Chinese intransigence regarding Beijing’s territorial claims on the Spartleys,” delle Fave explained.

In the last six years, Beijing not only refused to compromise but failed to increase investments in the Philippines. The January trip was a way for Marcos Jr. to offer China one last chance before “recognising that the US offer is the most attractive to Manila”, said Smith. The US offer included a promise to defend the Philippine fleet if it is attacked by the Chinese in the disputed South China Sea, a potential key flashpoint.

China’s uncompromising stance appears to have driven the Philippines into the arms of the Americans, but it could come back to bite them. Not only will Beijing find it more difficult to play hardball in the South China Sea now that there are US troops stationed in the Philippines, but these new bases are just over 300 km from Taiwan, strengthening the US’s ability to intervene if a conflict erupts between China and Taiwan.

“China preferred the certainty of having a foothold on the islands it claims rather than a pledge of allegiance from a country that has already changed its mind several times,” said delle Fave.

The Chinese are far from having had their final say.

Beijing authorities on Thursday denounced the signing of the new military agreement, saying it would contribute to fuelling tensions in the region. But “raising the tone on the Chinese side is only the first step”, according to Smith. He believes that China will want to prove that it can continue to navigate safely in Philippine territorial waters. This will likely lead to more incidents involving Chinese and Filipino vessels. But for the time being, none of the countries involved – China, the Philippines and the United States – seem to have any interest in seeing such incidents escalate into a full-blown security crisis.   

This article is a translation of the original in French.

 

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Live: US designates Russia’s Wagner Group as criminal organisation

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The US on Thursday formally designated Russian private military company the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organisation, freezing its US assets due to its role supporting Russia’s military in its war of aggression against Ukraine. This comes after French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna arrived in Odesa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, shortly after missile strikes hit crucial power infrastructure facilities in the surrounding region and caused blackouts in the city. Follow our live blog for the latest updates on the war in Ukraine. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).

4:23pm: US designates Wagner Group as criminal organisation

The US on Thursday formally designated Russian private military company the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organisation, freezing its US assets for helping Russia’s military in the Ukraine war.

Last month the White House said the Wagner Group had taken delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, in a sign of the group’s expanding role in that conflict

3:19pm: Training likely to be a big challenge as West sends Ukraine tanks

As the US said it will send Abrams tanks to Ukraine in a major policy reversal after the UK broke the dam last week by saying it will send Challengers, Rob Thornton, a lecturer in the defence studies department at King’s College London, told FRANCE 24 that “we need to be a bit careful”.

“You can supply several dozen tanks – will it make a big difference on the battlefield. And it’s one thing supplying these tanks; it’s another thing training the crews to operate these tanks. These are very much more sophisticated than the old Soviet tanks that are used by both the Russians and the Ukrainians at the moment. It will take a lot of training to match up, to marry up, the high-tech and modern tanks that are being supplied with the ability of their crews to use them to the greatest effect.” As well as the training question, there will be “other problems”. In particular, the “maintenance of these tanks is something the Ukrainians will have to very much get used to”, Thornton said.


 

2:51pm: Russia bans Meduza news site in latest media crackdown

Russian authorities designated the independent news outlet Meduza an “undesirable organisation” on Thursday, effectively outlawing the site from operating in Russia and banning any Russian from cooperating with Meduza or its journalists.

The designation is the latest in a years-long campaign by the Kremlin to curb independent media and stop their reporting from reaching ordinary Russians in a crackdown that has escalated since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

In a statement announcing the decision, Russia’s General Prosecutor said the Latvia-based news outlet “poses a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and the security of the Russian Federation”

2:42pm: ‘Two brigades of tanks’ for Ukraine army?

“There’s no doubt that with the decision […] of the United States to send its M1 Abrams tanks, a Rubicon has been passed here, and that momentum will now start to pick up,” said FRANCE 24 Chief Foreign Editor Robert Parsons.

“That’s certainly what the Ukrainians are hoping for, and last night Volodymyr Zelensky the Ukrainian president made that point in particular, when he was saying that ‘the key issue for us now is numbers’ and delivery time. They want those tanks as quickly as possible and they want them in as large numbers as possible,” Parsons continued. “They’re talking about 300; that’s what they believe they need if they’re going to stave off a Russian attack and then launch their own counter-attack against the Russians and break through and perhaps by the end of this year regain much of the territory that has been lost to the Russians over the last year.”

Given the number of countries now lining up to send tanks, “you could possibly envisage in pretty quick time two brigades of tanks being formed; that’s about 100 tanks”, Parsons noted. “That would suit the Ukrainians pretty well at this stage, but […] the Ukrainians are looking beyond this now. They’re talking about fighter jets. And although [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz said yesterday that’s not something that Germany would do, other NATO members are talking about the possibility.”


 

2:33pm: Ukraine’s wheat, corn crops shrink again as farmers struggle

Ukraine‘s corn and wheat production is set to fall for a second year in 2023, with corn output not expected to exceed 18 million tonnes and wheat production 16 million tonnes as farmers reduce planting due to the war, a grain sector group said on Thursday.

The projections were a best case scenario, and production could fall more sharply depending on weather and financial difficulties of farms, Ukraine Grain Association (UGA) head Nikolay Gorbachov told Reuters on the sidelines of Argus Media’s Paris Grain Conference.

Disruption to export trade following Russia’s invasion last year has left many farmers producing at a loss, he said.

“For farmers it became unprofitable to produce the grain and that’s why they cut the planted area,” he added.

2:28pm: Neither France nor allies at war with Russia, French foreign ministry underlines

Neither France nor its allies are fighting a war against Russia, the French foreign ministry said Thursday, following a Western decision to send heavy tanks to Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion.

“We are not at war with Russia and none of our partners are,” ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said, after comments from German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock that “we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other”.

2:18pm: French Leclerc tanks ‘not on the cards’ for Ukraine

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna’s visit to Odesa is a “highly symbolic” visit that was “hailed” by Ukraine’s foreign minister as “something courageous, something brave”, FRANCE 24’s Emmanuelle Chaze reported from Kyiv.

Colonna is in Odesa to “discuss the specific needs of the Ukrainian army when it comes to heavy weaponry”, Chaze continued. A “diplomatic source did address the question of whether or not Ukraine will get Leclerc tanks” from France – however, “apparently this is not on the cards because from the get-go, Ukraine was more keen to get Leopard tanks and maybe it would be too much of a hassle for Ukraine to have different kinds of tanks”.

A man walks next to the Opera Theatre building in the city centre, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine January 25, 2023.
A man walks next to the Opera Theatre building in the city centre, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine January 25, 2023. © Serhii Smolientsev, Reuters

 

12:28pm: Ukraine army says it downed 47 out of 55 Russian missiles, including 20 near Kyiv

The Ukrainian army said Thursday it had shot down 47 out of 55 missiles launched by Russia in a massive new wave of attacks.

The head of Ukraine’s army, Valery Zaluzhny, said Russia launched 55 air and sea-based missiles. “Ukraine’s armed forces destroyed 47 cruise missiles, 20 of them in the area of the capital,” he added on Telegram.

11:42am: French FM Colonna visits Odesa as it comes under Russian fire

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Thursday arrived in Ukrainian city Odesa in a visit aimed at underscoring France’s support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

She was there “to show France’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, now as before,” Colonna wrote on Twitter alongside a picture of herself in front of a city landmark.

Although delayed by a new wave of Russian strikes overnight and on Thursday morning, Colonna was still set to meet her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in the historic Black Sea port.

11:02am: Germany says to start talks with defence industry to speed up procurement

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday he would kick off talks with the defence industry as early as next week to speed up arms procurement and ramp up ammunitions supplies.

“My primary task now is to enter into talks with the defence industry with the aim of significantly shortening procurement times,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a military exercise in Altengrabow in eastern Germany.

“If you look at ammunition, there is also the issue of quantity. This is another topic that I will raise in my talks with the defence industry, likely as early as next week if the schedule permits it,” he added.

10:40am: Western tank deliveries ‘direct involvement’ in Ukraine conflict, Moscow says

The Kremlin said Thursday that a decision by Western countries to supply Ukraine with modern tanks meant that they were party to the conflict, after Berlin and Washington approved the weapons for Kyiv.

“European capitals and Washington constantly give statements that sending various types of weapons, including tanks, in no way means their involvement in hostilities. We strongly disagree with this. In Moscow, this is perceived as direct involvement in the conflict and we see that this is growing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

10:25am: Power cuts in Ukraine after Russian air strikes, operator says

Ukraine on Thursday enforced emergency power cuts in Kyiv and several other regions to relieve pressure on the electricity grid following Russian strikes, an operator said.

“Due to the threat of a missile attack in Kyiv and the regions of Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk emergency blackouts have been introduced,” said DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power producer.

Ukrainian authorities earlier on Thursday reported Russian hits on energy facilities.

10:03am: Kyiv’s mayor says one dead, two injured in Russian missile attack

The mayor of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv said one person had been killed and two more were wounded on Thursday after Russia launched more than a dozen missiles in its latest large-scale aerial offensive.

“As a result of a rocket hitting a non-residential building in the Golosiivsky district, there is information that one person is dead and two wounded,” Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a statement on social media. The Kyiv city military administration said the death was due to parts of a missile falling.

9:50am: Two energy facilities struck in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, local official says

Authorities in Ukraine‘s southern region of Odesa said Thursday that two energy facilities were hit by Russian missiles, in the latest attack by Moscow’s forces against critical infrastructure.

“There is already information about damage done to two critical energy infrastructure facilities in Odesa. There are no injured. Air Defence Forces are working over the Odesa region,” the head of the region’s military administration, Yuriy Kruk, said on social media.

9:25am: Kyiv mayor reports ‘explosion’, Ukraine downs 15 missiles

Ukraine said Thursday it had shot down more than a dozen Russian missiles launched towards Kyiv, while the capital’s major reported an explosion in the city.

“The enemy launched more than 15 cruise missiles in the direction of Kyiv. Thanks to the excellent work of air defence, all air targets were shot down,” said Sergiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, while mayor Vitali Klitschko said: “Explosion in Kyiv! Stay in shelters!”

9:05am: Russia fires ‘more than 30 missiles’ at Ukraine during rush hour, Kyiv says

Ukraine said Thursday that Russian forces had fired more than 30 missiles at targets across the country, in the latest wave of attacks that have put pressure on Ukraine’s air defence systems.

“We expect more than 30 missiles, which have already started to appear in various territories. Air defence systems are working,” Yuriy Ignat, a Ukrainian military spokesman, told local media.

The wave of missiles was launched during rush hour on Thursday morning and Ukrainians took cover in shelters as air defence forces shot down incoming salvos, officials said. An air raid alert wailed across the country as people were heading to work. In the capital Kyiv, crowds of people sheltered in underground metro stations, with some sitting on blankets or small plastic chairs.

A Reuters reporter heard the sound of a missile flying overhead at a low altitude, about 30 km from Kyiv. “As many as six Tu-95 (warplanes) have preliminarily taken off from Murmansk region and launched missiles,” air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said on national television.

7:53am: Air raid sirens heard across Ukraine as authorities report missile attacks

Ukraine declared an air raid alert over the whole country on Thursday, and senior officials said air defences units were shooting down incoming Russian missiles.

Two missiles were spotted over the territory of the Mykolaiv region, its governor, Vitaly Kim, said on the Telegram messaging app. “Missiles are flying inside the territory of Ukraine. At least two northwest through Mykolaiv region,” he said. Officials told the public to take shelter.

“The first Russian missiles have been shot down,” Andriy Yermak, head of the president’s office said.

Russia has targeted critical infrastructure with missile and drone strikes since October, causing sweeping blackouts and other outages during winter.

7:14am: Ukraine declares air raid alert over most of country, authorities warn of possible missile attack

Ukraine declared an air raid alert over most of the country on Thursday, and regional authorities warned of a possible missile attack.

The DTEK electricity company said it was performing emergency shutdowns of electro power in the capital Kyiv, the rest of the Kyiv region, and also the regions of Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk due to a danger of missile attack.

6:47am: Ukrainian military says it destroyed 24 Russian drones overnight, warns of more attacks

Russian forces launched an unsuccessful overnight drone attack on Ukraine on Thursday, mainly targeting central regions and the capital Kyiv, the Ukrainian military said.

Anti-aircraft defences downed all 24 drones, country’s military command said in a morning report.

“There’s a major danger of further aviation and missile attack across the entire territory (of Ukraine),” it said in a statement.

Kyiv’s regional administration said that 15 out of 24 drones have been downed around the Ukrainian capital and that there were no damages. It also warned people about the possibility of more missile attacks during the day.

3:40am: Ukraine’s Zelensky urges UN action on deportations

President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged a senior UN official to help find a way to resolve what Ukrainian authorities decry as a serious consequence of 11 months of war – the deportation to Russia of thousands of adults and children.

Ukraine has for months denounced reports of mass deportations to Russia, often to remote regions thousands of kilometres from Ukraine. Russia denies any suggestion of mistreatment or criminal intent, describing the mass movements as evacuations.

“The discussion focused above all on our people that the occupiers have deported to Russia,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address, referring to talks with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi earlier on Wednesday. “These are adults, these are our children. A mechanism is needed to protect and bring back people and to bring to account all those who are guilty of deportations. I am certain the UN institutions can show leadership in resolving this issue.”

>> Mother Russia: Maria Lvova-Belova, the Putin ally deporting Ukrainian children

 

© France Médias Monde graphic studio

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)

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