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Sending British fighter jets to Ukraine not right approach ‘for now’, says UK defence secretary – as it happened

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Ben Wallace says UK has not made a ‘solid decision’ not to send fighter jets but Downing Street appeared to rule it out as not ‘practical’. This live blog is closed

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Wed 1 Feb 2023 14.06 ESTFirst published on Wed 1 Feb 2023 00.34 EST
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Sending British fighter jets to Ukraine not right approach ‘for now’, says defence sec

Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said the UK has not made a “solid decision” not to send its fighter jets to Ukraine, but does not think it is the right approach “for now”.

Downing Street has appeared to rule out sending jets to Ukraine, saying it was not practical because “these are sophisticated pieces of equipment”.

Asked why Britain would not send jets to Ukraine, Wallace said:

I’ve been involved with this for a pretty long time. And I’ve learned two things: never rule anything in and never rule anything out.

He said this was “not a solid decision”, adding:

For now, I don’t think that’s the right approach … What’s going to move on this conflict this year is going to be the ability for Ukrainians to deploy western armour against Russia.

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Key events

Closing summary

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

  • Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said he does not think it is the right approach “for now” to send UK fighter jets to Ukraine. He said it was “not a solid decision”, adding: “I’ve learned two things: never rule anything in and never rule anything out.” Meanwhile, Downing Street has continued to rule out providing Kyiv with British jets, saying it was not practical given the complexity of the jets.

  • The UK’s statements came as its former prime minister Boris Johnson called on western leaders to “give the Ukrainians the tools to finish the job”, including heavy tanks and planes. Addressing the Atlantic Council in Washington, Johnson urged the west to “stop focusing on Putin and focus entirely on Ukraine”.

  • Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he had a “frank and productive” conversation with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, regarding his country’s “urgent operational needs for self-defence”.

  • Spain will initially send between four and six Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, El País is reporting. Italy is to join forces with France in supplying air defences to Ukraine, the FT reported. In an interview, Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said a package of military aid now being prepared by Giorgia Meloni’s government would probably include “weapons of defence against Russian missile attack”. “Italy is expected to provide the missile launchers, while France would supply the rockets,” the paper reports.

  • Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, has spoken out against his country delivering fighter jets to Ukraine. Habeck, an early supporter of his government supporting Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks, said such a move would probably be a step too far for western allies weighing up support for Kyiv’s cause against fears of being drawn into an outright war.

  • The US is readying more than $2bn worth of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons, two US officials briefed on the matter told Reuters. The Kremlin said longer-range rockets reportedly included in the upcoming package of military aid would escalate the conflict but not change its course.

  • Norwegian academics, rights campaigners, bestselling authors and a former minister have urged Oslo to increase its support for Ukraine, saying the government must do more to help after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war. The Scandinavian country’s oil and gas revenues have soared to record levels over the past 12 months as energy prices have tripled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Norway has replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas.

  • Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Russia and China’s growing relationship poses a threat not only to Asia but also to Europe. In a speech to Keio University in Tokyo, the Nato chief underlined the importance of stronger cooperation and more “friends” for Nato in the Indo-Pacific region, adding that the war in Ukraine had demonstrated “how security is interconnected”.

  • Pro-Russia forces have claimed in Russian media that the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut is nearly encircled. Tass quoted Col Vitaly Kiselev, on behalf of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, saying: “Bakhmut has practically been ‘embraced’ from three sides, an intensive knocking out of the enemy is under way. They are trying, and I am sure that they will succeed … to go to the Chasiv Yar area, from where intensive shelling is going on back to Soledar, Bakhmut.”

  • The Kinburn peninsula, a strip of land that protrudes from the southern side of Kherson oblast on the left bank of the Dnieper River, is in the “grey zone”, with neither Ukrainian or Russian military fully in control of the territory, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne.

  • The UK Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update says that recent days have seen “some of the most intense shelling of the conflict” along the Dnieper River. “This has included continued shelling of Kherson city,” the ministry notes, adding that outside the Donbas, Kherson is the city most consistently shelled in the conflict.

  • The woman leading the Kyiv tax authority has been accused of a multimillion-dollar fraud after a raid on one of her four homes. Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI) said in a statement that the acting head of the inspectorate, who has not been named, had abused her “power and official position” along with other members of the authority.

  • The development came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s campaign against state corruption in Ukraine continues before a meeting on Friday in Kyiv with senior EU officials to discuss potential accession to the bloc. The crackdown continued on Wednesday with a raid on the house of Igor Kolomoisky, a former political ally of Ukraine’s president, and the former interior minister Arsen Avakov.

  • Russia has claimed it wants to preserve the New Start treaty, describing the treaty as “very important”. The US accused Moscow on Tuesday of violating the treaty – the last remaining nuclear treaty between the two countries – which caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy. Washington has been keen to preserve the treaty but ties with Moscow are the worst in decades over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  • Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he would be willing to consider serving as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine if asked by both warring countries and the US. Netanyahu said he was asked to be a mediator shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year but he declined because he was Israel’s opposition leader at the time, not the prime minister.

  • The prominent Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court after it found him guilty of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army. Investigators opened a case against Nevzorov last year for posts on social media in which he accused Russia’s armed forces of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an assertion Moscow said was false.

  • Belarus’s armed forces are now in autonomous control of Russian-supplied, nuclear-capable Iskander mobile guided missile systems after completing training in Russia as well as exercises in Belarus, its defence ministry has said. The commander of Belarusian rocket and artillery forces, Ruslan Chekhov, praised the missiles for their “simplicity of use, reliability, manoeuvrability and firepower”.

  • Latvia will not send its athletes to the 2024 Paris Olympics if competitors from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part while the invasion of Ukraine is ongoing, a spokesperson for the country’s Olympic committee said. Ukraine has threatened to boycott the 2024 Games if athletes from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part. Neither Lithuania’s nor Estonia’s national Olympic committees are considering boycotts, their chairs said on Tuesday.

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Norway urged to step up Ukraine support after profiting from war

Jon Henley
Jon Henley

Norwegian academics, rights campaigners, bestselling authors and a former minister have urged Oslo to increase its support for Ukraine, saying the government must do more to help after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war.

In a letter published in the VG tabloid, signatories including the former foreign minister Knut Vollebæk, the anthropologist Erika Fatland and Henrik Urdal of the Oslo Peace Research Institute said Norway was the only country in Europe to be profiting from the war.

The wealthy Scandinavian country’s oil and gas revenues have soared to record levels over the past 12 months as energy prices tripled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Norway replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas.

Compared with original estimates, Oslo’s state budget projected an additional €180bn (£160bn) in oil and gas income for 2022 and 2023, the signatories wrote, adding that the government’s public pledges of support for Ukraine over the same period amounted to just €1.27bn.

Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has dismissed any suggestion that the country is profiteering from the war. “It’s a notion I flatly refuse,” Støre told AFP on Tuesday, adding that a major “multi-year support package” would be announced in the coming days.

The letter acknowledged that more humanitarian and military support would be coming and said the value of arms supplies in particular was hard to calculate, but said:

Either way, Norway can afford to contribute more to Ukraine than we are doing. Far more.

Read the full story here:

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Sending British fighter jets to Ukraine not right approach ‘for now’, says defence sec

Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said the UK has not made a “solid decision” not to send its fighter jets to Ukraine, but does not think it is the right approach “for now”.

Downing Street has appeared to rule out sending jets to Ukraine, saying it was not practical because “these are sophisticated pieces of equipment”.

Asked why Britain would not send jets to Ukraine, Wallace said:

I’ve been involved with this for a pretty long time. And I’ve learned two things: never rule anything in and never rule anything out.

He said this was “not a solid decision”, adding:

For now, I don’t think that’s the right approach … What’s going to move on this conflict this year is going to be the ability for Ukrainians to deploy western armour against Russia.

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Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he had a “frank and productive” conversation with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, regarding his country’s “urgent operational needs for self-defence”.

France stands with Ukraine, Reznikov posted to Twitter, as he thanked Macron and the country for its “leadership and unwavering support”.

Had the honor to meet with the 🇫🇷President @EmmanuelMacron . A very frank&productive conversation took place regarding #UAarmy urgent operational needs for self-defense from the rus aggressor.
🇫🇷 is with us!Thank you to 🇫🇷President & people for their leadership&unwavering support

— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) February 1, 2023

UK rules out sending British fighter jets to Ukraine again

As Boris Johnson piles pressure on western leaders to supply fighter jets to Ukraine, Downing Street has continued to rule out providing Kyiv with British jets.

Johnson’s trip to Washington this week to bolster support for Ukraine was “in his own capacity and not on behalf of the UK government”, a No 10 spokesperson said.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, is “pleased” his predecessor is “continuing his staunch support of the United Kingdom’s efforts to help Ukraine secure a lasting peace”, they added.

Asked about Johnson’s call for jets, the official said:

It’s currently not practical to send UK jets, we will continue to work closely with the Ukrainians to understand their needs and how allies can further support them.

Given the complexity of UK fighter jets and the length of time required to train them, we do not currently think it is practical to do so.

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Boris Johnson says it’s up to Ukrainians to define what victory is, but it’s his own “instinct” that Kyiv should be “taking back their entire country”.

Putin needs to be “punished” for his “decision to change borders by force” in 2014, he says, referring to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

He says Ukraine should begin the process of induction to the Nato military alliance and the EU when the war ends.

Asked what Ukraine needs to win the war, Johnson replies that he’s been told by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv needs longer-range missile systems, armoured cars and planes.

The UK prime minister’s spokesperson said yesterday that supplying western jets was not practical. “These are sophisticated pieces of equipment,” they said. “We do not think it is practical to send those jets into Ukraine.”

Johnson says:

I don’t think it would take the Ukrainians very long to work out how to use F-16 or Typhoons.

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Boris Johnson: Stop focusing on Putin and give Ukrainians the planes

The former UK prime minister Boris Johnson is addressing the Atlantic Council to discuss western unity and support for Ukraine.

Johnson called on western leaders to “give the Ukrainians the tools to finish the job”. He said:

Give them the deep fire and artillery systems. Give them the tanks. Give them the planes. Because they have a plan. They know what they need to do.

He asks “what is the point” of having Challenger 2 tanks patrolling “the beautiful villages of Wiltshire” when Ukrainians could be using them to bring this war to an end.

He says:

Every time we’ve been asked to intensify our support, we’ve be met with the same argument that we risk an escalation by Putin. How can we seriously worry about provoking him when we have seen what he will do, without the slightest provocation?

Vladimir Putin “isn’t mad, he isn’t ill”, Johnson says. “He simply made a historic miscalculation.” He urges the world to avoid being drawn into the Russian leader’s “personal psychodrama”. He says:

We need to stop focusing on Putin and focus entirely on Ukraine because they are fighting for all of us. They’re fighting for our values, and they have reminded us that those values of freedom and democracy are worth fighting for. So there are no conceivable grounds for delay.

You can watch his speech here:

Boris Johnson discusses Ukraine support in Washington DC – watch live
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Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has said his country needs to quickly order new Leopard tanks to replace those going to Ukraine, adding that he does not care where the money comes from.

Speaking while on a visit to a tank battalion in the western town of Augustdorf that was chosen to supply 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Pistorius said:

For me, the crucial fact is that we have to order new tanks, not in a year but swiftly so that production can begin.

He added:

Where the money will come from? Let me casually put it like this: frankly, I don’t care. It is essential that we can provide them [the tanks] quickly.

Boris Pistorius in Augustdorf, western Germany. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images
Pistorius sits next to a German soldier driving a Leopard 2 tank in Augustdorf. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images
Tank crew members after meeting Pistorius. Photograph: Benjamin Westhoff/Reuters
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Summary of the day so far

It’s nearly 6.30pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

  • Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Russia and China’s growing relationship poses a threat not only to Asia but also to Europe. In a speech to Keio University in Tokyo, the Nato chief underlined the importance of stronger cooperation and more “friends” for Nato in the Indo-Pacific region, adding that the war in Ukraine had demonstrated “how security is interconnected”.

  • Pro-Russia forces have claimed in Russian media that the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut is nearly encircled. Tass quoted Col Vitaly Kiselev, on behalf of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, saying: “Bakhmut has practically been ‘embraced’ from three sides, an intensive knocking out of the enemy is under way. They are trying, and I am sure that they will succeed … to go to the Chasiv Yar area, from where intensive shelling is going on back to Soledar, Bakhmut.”

  • The Kinburn peninsula, a strip of land that protrudes from the southern side of Kherson oblast on the left bank of the Dnieper River, is in the “grey zone”, with neither Ukrainian or Russian military fully in control of the territory, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne.

  • The UK Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update says that recent days have seen “some of the most intense shelling of the conflict” along the Dnieper River. “This has included continued shelling of Kherson city,” the ministry notes, adding that outside the Donbas, Kherson is the city most consistently shelled in the conflict.

  • The woman leading the Kyiv tax authority has been accused of a multimillion-dollar fraud after a raid on one of her four homes. Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI) said in a statement that the acting head of the inspectorate, who has not been named, had abused her “power and official position” along with other members of the authority.

  • The development came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s campaign against state corruption in Ukraine continues before a meeting on Friday in Kyiv with senior EU officials to discuss potential accession to the bloc. The crackdown continued on Wednesday with a raid on the house of Igor Kolomoisky, a former political ally of Ukraine’s president, and the former interior minister Arsen Avakov.

  • Russia has claimed it wants to preserve the New Start treaty, describing the treaty as “very important”. The US accused Moscow on Tuesday of violating the treaty – the last remaining nuclear treaty between the two countries – which caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy. Washington has been keen to preserve the treaty but ties with Moscow are the worst in decades over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  • Spain will initially send between four and six Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, El País is reporting. Italy is to join forces with France in supplying air defences to Ukraine, the FT reported. In an interview, Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said a package of military aid now being prepared by Giorgia Meloni’s government would probably include “weapons of defence against Russian missile attack”. “Italy is expected to provide the missile launchers, while France would supply the rockets,” the paper writes.

  • Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, has spoken out against his country delivering fighter jets to Ukraine. Habeck, an early supporter of his government supporting Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks, said such a move would probably be a step too far for western allies weighing up support for Kyiv’s cause against fears of being drawn into an outright war.

  • The US is readying more than $2bn worth of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons, two US officials briefed on the matter told Reuters. The Kremlin said longer-range rockets reportedly included in the upcoming package of military aid would escalate the conflict but not change its course.

  • The UK’s former prime minister Boris Johnson has called on western leaders to supply fighter jets to Ukraine “as fast as possible”. A Downing Street spokesperson said on Tuesday that supplying western jets was not practical. “These are sophisticated pieces of equipment,” they said. But Johnson, who is in Washington for talks with US lawmakers to bolster support for Ukraine, said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should be given all the equipment he needs.

  • Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he would be willing to consider serving as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine if asked by both warring countries and the US. Netanyahu said he was asked to be a mediator shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year but he declined because he was Israel’s opposition leader at the time, not the prime minister.

  • The prominent Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court after it found him guilty of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army. Investigators opened a case against Nevzorov last year for posts on social media in which he accused Russia’s armed forces of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an assertion Moscow said was false.

  • Belarus’s armed forces are now in autonomous control of Russian-supplied, nuclear-capable Iskander mobile guided missile systems after completing training in Russia as well as exercises in Belarus, its defence ministry has said. The commander of Belarusian rocket and artillery forces, Ruslan Chekhov, praised the missiles for their “simplicity of use, reliability, manoeuvrability and firepower”.

  • Latvia will not send its athletes to the 2024 Paris Olympics if competitors from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part while the invasion of Ukraine is ongoing, a spokesperson for the country’s Olympic committee said. Ukraine has threatened to boycott the 2024 Games if athletes from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part. Neither Lithuania’s nor Estonia’s national Olympic committees are considering boycotts, their chairs said on Tuesday.

  • The Polish ruling party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, and opposition party member Radek Sikorski have settled a long-running dispute, with Kaczyński agreeing to pay 50,000 złotys (£9,400/$11,500) in a donation to support Ukraine’s army over comments he made about Sikorski in 2016 regarding the 2010 plane crash near Smolensk, Russia, that killed Kaczynski’s twin brother, the then president Lech Kaczyński, and 95 others.

Hello everyone, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong still with you with all the latest developments from the Russia-Ukraine war. I’m on Twitter or you can email me.

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Head of Kyiv tax authority accused of multimillion-dollar fraud

Daniel Boffey
Daniel Boffey

The woman leading the Kyiv tax authority has been accused of a multimillion-dollar fraud after a raid on one of her four homes, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s campaign against state corruption in Ukraine continues.

The development came as Ukraine’s president prepares for a meeting on Friday with senior EU officials to discuss potential accession to the bloc of 27 member states.

Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI) said the acting head of the inspectorate, who has not been named, had abused her “power and official position” along with other members of the authority.

Investigators search the woman’s home. Photograph: Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation

Investigators claimed the woman’s lifestyle did not fit her declared income as head of the capital’s main tax office. She is said to own three flats in the city with a total value of $1m (£811,640), a house near Kyiv worth about $200,000, and two cars together worth about $150,000.

Her driver was found to have a $100,000 car registered in his name, although the man’s “income in recent years was no more than $8,000”, the SBI claimed.

During a raid on the woman’s home, investigators found $158,000, 530,000 Ukrainian hrynvia (£11,647), and €2,200 (£1,944) in cash and an array of expensive jewellery, designer-branded clothing and gold watches. The SBI published photos of what it described as the haul.

Read the full story here:

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A US citizen has been detained and fined by a Russian court for walking a cow on Moscow’s Red Square that she said she bought to save from slaughter, according to reports by Russian state media.

Alicia Day, 34, was fined 20,000 roubles (£231) for obstructing pedestrians in an unauthorised protest and sentenced to 13 days of “administrative arrest” on a separate charge of disobeying police orders, Russian state media reported.

The state-run Tass news agency quoted her as saying:

I bought the calf so that it wouldn’t be eaten. I decided to take him to such a beautiful place and show him the country.

Video posted by Russian state media and shared by Meduza’s Kevin Rothrock showed Day in court:

Here’s an unusual one: a Moscow court has sentenced U.S. citizen Alicia Day to 13 days in jail for disobeying the police. The animal rights activist apparently bought a cow through the Avito marketplace and then decided to show it Red Square. Um, okay. https://t.co/oAWXjQ0KO1 pic.twitter.com/5mDEByFd9u

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) February 1, 2023
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told a government meeting on Wednesday that shelling of Russian regions from Ukraine must not be permitted, and this was the task of the defence ministry, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Vladimir Rogov, chair of the We Are Together with Russia organisation that operates within the occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, has echoed the comments on his Telegram channel, saying “On my own behalf, I would add that this problem is especially acute for residents of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well as the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics of the Russian Federation.”

Russia claimed to have annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in 2022, despite not being fully in control of the territory, following referendums widely derided internationally as sham votes.

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Russia’s state-owned RIA news agency is reporting that the Novozybkov oil pumping station of the Druzhba oil pipeline in the Bryansk region of Russia came under fire from Ukraine. It quotes a spokesperson from Transneft, which operates the pipeline, saying:

As a result of a shell hit on the territory of the station, there were no victims, the damage is being repaired by the repair team. The Druzhba oil pipeline is operating normally.

The Bryansk region borders Ukraine, and is to the north of the Chernihiv and Sumy regions. The Druzhba oil pipeline runs from Russia into Belarus, and splits into branches that go on to serve different destinations in Europe.

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Austria’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, has spoken to journalists during his visit to Kyiv. Die Presse in Austria reports that the president said:

We want to send a signal: we stand by Ukraine. We won’t leave you alone. Ukraine is exposed to a war of aggression that is second to none. This is comparable to the colonial wars of the 19th century.

Van der Bellen went on to say that Ukraine had been given a choice by Russia of either becoming a province ruled from Moscow or to have everything destroyed, but instead Ukrainians had shown how strong their will to resist was.

He added that his message to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was Austria is helping in Ukraine and will continue to help.

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The Polish ruling party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, and opposition party member Radek Sikorski have settled a long-running dispute with Kaczyński agreeing to pay 50,000 zlotys (£9,400 / $11,500) in a donation to support Ukraine’s army.

Kaczyński had been ordered to pay Sikorski more than 700,000 zlotys (£131,500 / $162,000) in a defamation case over comments he made about Sikorski in 2016 regarding the 2010 plane crash near Smolensk, Russia, that killed Kaczynski’s twin brother, thenpresident Lech Kaczyński, and 95 others. Sikorski was foreign minister at the time of the disaster and is now a member of the Europeanparliament and an outspoken government critic.

Associated Press report that Kaczyński said the court’s penalty was so high that he would have to sell his house to pay it, and Sikorski replied by saying he believed “that the penalties for defamation should be severe but not ruinous”.

The two agreed the smaller sum should be donated to Ukraine, and Sikorski said he accepted that form of apology, adding: “I’m glad we found a patriotic solution.”

Kaczyński said in a statement: “Today Ukraine is fighting for its independence and freedom, but also for our security. We support it and we will support it. Since the payment to support the fund for the Ukrainian armed forces closes my controversial dispute with Sikorski, I do so with satisfaction.”

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Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports that law enforcement forces have discovered the body of a man in Myrne, a village that is in Mykolaiv region, against the border with Kherson. It reports:

In the de-occupied village of Myrne, Mykolaiv region, law enforcement officers discovered the body of a dead person. A 37-year-old man died on 16 March, 2022, during the shelling of the village by Russian troops. The body was found on 31 January, 2023, during the survey of the settlement and the collection of information about war crimes by the army of the Russian Federation.

The claims have not been independently verified.

Belarus’s armed forces are now in autonomous control of Russian-supplied nuclear-capable Iskander mobile guided missile systems after completing training in Russia as well as exercises in Belarus, its defence ministry has said.

The Iskander missiles are capable of hitting targets at a range of up to 500 km (310 miles), according to the ministry.

The commander of Belarusian rocket and artillery forces, Ruslan Chekhov, praised the missiles for their “simplicity of use, reliability, manoeuvrability and firepower” in comments posted on Military TV’s Telegram channel and reported by Reuters.

On Tuesday, Minsk’s defence ministry said a week-long joint military training with Russia had started on the country’s territory, amid concern that Moscow is pressuring its closest ally to join the war in Ukraine.

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said he will not join the war, but his territory was used as a launchpad for the failed push for Kyiv last year, and Ukrainian authorities say it is still used as a base for drone and missile attacks.

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