Wave of resignations as corruption scandal hits Ukraine government; Nato’s Stoltenberg ‘confident’ on tanks solution as Poland sends formal request to Germany
Germany could give approval to Poland for Warsaw to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine as soon as Wednesday. Figures close to the decision spoke to the Bloomsberg news site after Poland submitted a formal application on Tuesday. German law requires them to give approval before any of its military equipment is re-exported. Germany has said it will respond with “necessary urgency”.
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg is confident the alliance will find a solution soon, he said after meeting Germany’s defence minister. “At this pivotal moment in the war, we must provide heavier and more advanced systems to Ukraine, and we must do it faster,” Stoltenberg said.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Biden administration is leaning toward sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The paper says Berlin would agree to send a smaller number of its own Leopard 2 tanks and would also approve the delivery of more German-made tanks by Poland and other nations in return.
In Ukraine, fifteen senior officials have left their posts since Saturday, six of whom have had corruption allegations levelled at them by journalists and Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities. The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on Tuesday he had asked President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday to relieve him of his duties as part of the wave of government resignations and dismissals.
Deputy defence minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, responsible for supplying troops with food and equipment, also resigned, citing “media accusations” of corruption that he and the ministry say are baseless. Deputy prosecutor general Oleksiy Symonenko has been removed from his post, and two deputy ministers resigned from Ukraine’s ministry of communities and territories development.
Five regional governors are also being removed from power: Valentyn Reznichenko, of Dnipropetrovsk, Oleksandra Starukha of Zaporizhzhia, Oleksiy Kuleba of Kyiv, Dymtro Zhivytskyi, of Sumy and Yaroslav Yanushevich, of Kherson. Kherson and Zaporizhizhia are two of the regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation has claimed to annex.
Ukraine has enough coal and gas reserves for the remaining months of winter despite repeated Russian attacks on its energy system, prime minister Denys Shmyhal has said.
Finland’s foreign minister Pekka Haavisto has signalled a possible pause in discussions with Turkey over Finnish ambitions to join Nato alongside Sweden, which he says is due to the pressure of Turkey’s forthcoming election.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, outlined the EU’s new military aid package to Ukraine worth €500m, after the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers met in Brussels on Monday. The package was approved along with a further €45m for the EU’s military training mission for Ukraine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said his country would not block the EU move.
Russia’s ambassador to Estonia, Vladimir Lipaev, has accused the west of arming the Baltic state with weapons that could strike at St Petersburg.
Russian forces continue to “endure operational deadlock and heavy casualties”, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. An MoD intelligence update on Monday also said new disciplinary measures introduced by Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff and newly appointed commander in Ukraine, had been met with “sceptical feedback”, in particular in response to the decision to ban soldiers from wearing beards.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said Moscow was willing to negotiate with Ukraine in the early months of the war but the US and other western nations advised Kyiv against it. Lavrov was speaking during his visit to South Africa on Monday, where he met with the foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, a month before the South African military is set to host a joint military exercise with Russia and China on its east coast. On Tuesday Lavrov visited Eswatini.
Germany began Monday to move its Patriot air defence systems into Polish territory, close to the Ukrainian border, where they will be deployed to prevent stray missile strikes. Berlin’s offer to deploy three of its Patriot units in Poland came after two men were killed by a stray Ukrainian missile that struck the Polish village of Przewodow in November.
Andrey Medvedev, a former commander of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group who recently fled to Norway, has been apprehended by police, he told the Guardian on Monday. Medvedev’s Norwegian lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, said that the police decided to apprehend Medvedev on Sunday evening after a “strong disagreement” with the former Wagner soldier over living conditions at the safe house where he had been living since he arrived in Norway.