Before ending his two-day stay in China, the President of Brazil, Lula, pronounced a sentence which must satisfy Beijing and Moscow. He felt that the United States should stop “encouraging war” in Ukraine, before asking them and the European Union “to start talking about peace”. According to him, the international community is capable of “convincing” Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky that “peace is in the interest of the whole world”. The Brazilian president defends the idea of a group of countries whose goal would be to work for peace in Ukraine, and before his visit to China, he had promised that this group would be “created” on his return.
Strike on a building in Sloviansk: at least nine dead
A ninth person was found dead on Saturday in the rubble of a building in Sloviansk, eastern Ukraine. The day before, this city located in the oblast of Donetsk was targeted by a Russian strike. “Unfortunately, during the night, the death toll increased. Rescuers pulled out the body of a woman from the rubble,” Vadim Lyakh, the head of the city’s military administration, wrote on Facebook. He said “five people” identified remained buried in the ruins, and that 21, in total, had been injured.
A two-year-old child notably died shortly after being pulled out of the rubble, said Daria Zarivna, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on Friday evening. Sloviansk is in a Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region, 45 kilometers northwest of Bakhmout. According to kyiv, it was targeted on Friday by seven missiles, which damaged five buildings, five houses, a school and an administrative building.
Separately, Moscow said it was increasing pressure to seize other areas of the ravaged city of Bakhmout, located not far from Sloviansk. The Russian army assured that the mercenaries of the Wagner group were carrying out “high-intensity combat operations to conquer the western districts of the city”, supported by airborne troops from Moscow.
Putin signs law facilitating Russian military mobilization
After Russian deputies voted on Tuesday a law facilitating the incorporation of Russian citizens into the army, Vladimir Putin signed it on Friday. According to this law, a reservist can now be mobilized electronically. Until then, summonses were delivered by hand, which complicated mobilization, as many Russians had left their official address.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov defended the authorities’ eagerness to vote for this text, saying it was “extremely important”. The law specifies that any Russian who does not respond to this new mode of summons would be “considered as refractory”, and would incur a prison sentence. To date, Moscow has called up 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine.
Canadian Leopard 2 tanks have arrived in Poland
The eight Leopard 2 tanks that Canada had promised to help Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion have arrived in Poland, announced Anita Anand, the Canadian Minister of Defense. “It’s official: the eight Leopard 2 battle tanks promised by Canada to Ukraine have arrived in Poland,” the minister tweeted. “We will continue to stand in solidarity with Ukraine and provide Ukrainians with the tools they need to fight and win this war,” she also wrote.
For its part, the Danish government announced, at the beginning of January, its desire to deliver all of its nineteen Cesar long-range guns to Ukraine. They will be delivered to Ukraine “in the coming weeks”, the Ministry of Defense said today in a communicated.
Leak of confidential documents: a young American soldier charged
Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old soldier suspected of being the source of the leak of several confidential American documents relating to the war in Ukraine, was presented on Friday before a federal court in Boston. Incorporated into the Air National Guard, he was charged with “unauthorized retention and transmission of information relating to national defense”, and “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials”. He faces up to fifteen years in prison.
According to US intelligence, part of the Russian special forces is decimated
The Russians call them “the spetsnaz”. They form part of the country’s special operations forces and are, according to an American report, decimated by the fighting in Ukraine. Usually hired for high-risk infiltration missions, the spetsnaz, numbering 17,000, are now used by the Kremlin as fighters. And according to the document, three brigades would have lost 90% of their strength. For the 346th Brigade, for example, only “125 active members out of the 900 initially deployed” remain.