A few days before the first anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict, on February 24, and against a background of intensification in recent weeks of its assault on the eastern part of Ukrainian territory, Russia is in search of a victory. The epicenter of the fighting is in eastern Ukraine, in Bakhmout.
Thursday, February 16, the boss of the Russian paramilitaries of Wagner judged that Bakhmout would not fall before “March or April” 2023. “I think it’s March or April. To take Bakhmout, you have to cut off all the supply routes “Ukrainians,” Evgeny Prigojine, founder of the Wagner Group, said in a video posted on the Internet. “I think we would have taken Bakhmout if it weren’t for this monstrous military bureaucracy and if we weren’t being put in the way every day,” he continued in another video, spreading in the public arena his differences with the military hierarchy.
The United States and its allies are preparing new sanctions against Russia
The United States and its allies are preparing to adopt new sanctions against Russia on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for political affairs, said Thursday. “You will see around the 24th a new big package of sanctions from the United States and all our G7 partner allies,” Victoria Nuland told reporters.
“These sanctions will deepen and broaden in some categories the measures we have already taken, especially to limit the flow of technology to the Russian defense industry,” she said. The official further stressed that these sanctions would target people, tighten banking restrictions and affect third countries allowing Russia to circumvent the sanctions.
The Russians are “very clever”, she noted, in importing laptop computers, for example, or even refrigerators from third countries, which they then strip of their electronic chips to use in their war machine. The United States and its allies have imposed drastic sanctions against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, hitting the highest levels of the Russian state, as well as its industry, banks and oil sector.
The war in Ukraine, one of the major issues of the Munich Security Conference
The war in Ukraine, nearly a year after the Russian invasion, and the heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington are the main issues at the Munich Security Conference which begins this Friday, February 17.
More than 150 government representatives will meet for this high mass devoted to international security issues, which is held each year in the Bavarian capital. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron will be among the headliners this Friday.
The head of Chinese diplomacy Wang Yi, the American vice-president Kamala Harris, the head of diplomacy Antony Blinken as well as the head of NATO Jens Stoltenberg, who will leave his functions in the fall, will also be present. No Russian official has been invited this year. Western leaders should renew their commitment to support Kyiv for as long as it takes to repel Russian aggression, both financially and militarily.
At the opening of the Berlinale, Zelensky calls on art and cinema to engage
“The movie theater […] can inspire and influence people who can change the world,” said Volodymyr Zelensky at the opening of the Berlinale, which decided to shine its spotlight on Ukraine. “Culture and cinema cannot be outside of politics, when it comes to a policy of aggression, mass crimes, murders, terror […] a policy of total war like that of Russia,” continued the Ukrainian president, speaking by video.
The leader is at the center of the documentary event of this festival, Superpower, filmed by Sean Penn in the middle of the Russian invasion almost a year ago, and which is due to be presented on Saturday February 18. “In these times, art cannot be neutral” and if culture “remains silent, it contributes to evil”, continued the one who was an actor before being elected president. He thanked the German festival which has programmed several Ukrainian films and repainted its Golden Bear in yellow and blue, the colors of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Nobel Peace laureate pleads for special tribunal
Ukrainian Oleksandra Matviïtchouk, whose NGO is co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, on Thursday called on the UN and the European Union to support the establishment of a special tribunal to try the most senior Russian officials, until to President Vladimir Putin.
“We must break the circle of impunity,” urged in an interview with AFP Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) which documents war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. “There will be no lasting peace without justice”, she continued, while acknowledging that obtaining the support of a majority of the members of the United Nations for the establishment of a special tribunal would be a “difficult task”. Kiev would like a special tribunal capable of trying Vladimir Putin for the “crime of aggression” against Ukraine, based on a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Israel “attached to the sovereignty” of Ukraine
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Thursday in Kiev that his country was “committed to the sovereignty” of Ukraine, on the occasion of the first visit of a minister of the Jewish state to Ukraine since the Russian invasion a year ago.
“Israel stands firmly in solidarity with the Ukrainians and remains committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Eli Cohen said during a press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kouleba. “Israel strongly opposes to the murder of innocent civilians”, he added, after going in the morning to the martyred city of Boutcha, symbol of the atrocities of which Russia is accused.
“The tragic images are still imprinted in my heart,” said the Israeli minister about Boutcha, whose photos of the bodies of civilians killed and abandoned in the streets of this suburb of Kiev caused great emotion in the world in April 2022. “We cannot remain indifferent to these difficult images and to the stories of atrocities, which I have heard here. Israel condemns any intentional attack against innocent people,” he wrote on Twitter in the morning.