January 29, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

The Russian mercenary company Wagner says its fighters have taken another village near the city of Bakhmut, where intense battles between Russian and Ukrainian forces continue.

Wagner said on its official Telegram channel that its "assault teams have liberated Blahodatne village thereby they have established full control over the settlements adjacent to the city."

Blahodatne is a small village about 6 kilometers (4 miles) to the north of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

Wagner posted photographs and video of their fighters at the entrance to the village. It said that claiming the town would allow it to put more pressure on Ukraine's troops on the northeast outskirts of Bakhmut, including in the small communities of Krasna Hora and Paraskoviivka.

Keep in mind: CNN has not been able to independently verify Wagner's claim, and is reaching out to the Ukrainian military for comment. Reuters reported Sunday that Ukraine claimed to repel attacks on the village the day prior.

Moscow's private military also led the capture of Soledar, located a few miles northeast of Bakhmut. After initially denying Wagner's claim to control the town, Ukraine's military acknowledged that it had pulled back from the territory earlier this week.

More on Wagner's assault: The Russian goal appears to be to encircle Bakhmut, rather than to fight in the city itself, which has endured months of brutal battle.

Wagner fighters are reported to have also made gains to the south of the city in the last week. The last remaining routes into the city under Ukrainian control have come under heavier Russian fire in the past week, according to Ukrainian officials and commanders. 

The Wagner statement acknowledged that attacking Kyiv's forces on the high ground to the west of Bakhmut would be more challenging. 

In the last few days, a CNN team in the area has observed intense shelling to the north of Bakhmut.

In addition to the 14 Leopard 2 tanks pledged, Poland said Friday that it will send 60 more modern battles tanks to Ukraine.

The West’s decision to finally send tanks to Ukraine has caused some to ask the uncomfortable question: Does this mean that NATO is now in direct conflict with Russia? 

This narrative, which is being pushed hard by the Kremlin, undoubtedly helps Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies deflect from the fact that Moscow launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine and illegally occupied parts of a sovereign state.  

It also, perhaps more conveniently for Putin, gives NATO allies pause for thought when it comes to deciding exactly how much military assistance they should give Ukraine.  

First things first: The consensus among experts is that no NATO member is anywhere near what could be considered "at war" with Russia by any internationally accepted legal definition. Therefore, the idea that the alliance as a whole is at war with Russia is a non-starter.  

“War would require strikes carried out by US or NATO forces, in uniform, attacking from NATO territory against Russian forces, Russian territory, or the Russian populace,” explains William Alberque, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Any fighting by Ukraine – with any conventional weapons, against any Russian forces – is not US/NATO war on Ukraine, no matter how much Russia wants to claim it so,” he adds. 

Moscow's tactic: That hasn't kept the Kremlin from exploiting certain grey areas inherent to modern warfare to incorrectly claim that NATO is the chief aggressor in the conflict. 

Those grey areas might include the use of Western intelligence to carry out attacks on Russian targets.

They could also invoke the US "war on terror" and use of NATO’s Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, in which America was attacked by terrorists rather than a nation state, as a dubious parallel.

Russia’s Security Council secretary, Nikolai Patrushev, has claimed that the West is trying to “destroy” Russia. Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, has said that the US administration is pushing Ukraine to “carry out terrorist attacks in Russia.” 

More context: Whatever slim merit there might be to these cynical claims, they pale in comparison to the documented brutality and illegal actions of Russian forces in Ukraine since Putin ordered the invasion. 

But the fact that they exist and are being taken seriously by analysts and commentators outside of Russia, including in Washington DC, plays into the Kremlin’s hands in more ways than one.

Continue reading McGee's full analysis here.

Dozens of modern tanks headed for Ukraine from Western allies are due to make a major impact in the fight against Russia, but Ukrainian troops have also mastered the use of older fighting vehicles.

CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen goes to the front lines near Bakhmut, Ukraine, with a unit fighting Moscow's forces in a Soviet-era T-64 tank:

Olesya Krivtsova sports an anti-Putin tattoo on one ankle and a bracelet that tracks her every move on the other.

The 19-year-old from Russia’s Arkhangelsk region must wear the device while she is under house arrest after she was charged over social media posts that authorities say discredit the Russian army and justify terrorism.

Russian officials added Krivtsova to the list of terrorists and extremists, on par with ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban, for posting an Instagram story about the explosion on the Crimean bridge in October that also criticized Russia for invading Ukraine.

Krivtsova, a student at Northern (Arctic) Federal University in the northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, is also facing criminal charges for discrediting the Russian army for making an allegedly critical repost of the war in a student chat on the Russian social network VK.

Currently, Krivtsova is staying under house arrest in her mother’s apartment in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region, banned from going online and using other forms of communication.

Read more of Krivtsova's story here.

Some more context: Independent human rights monitor OVD-Info has reported at least 61 cases involving the charges of justification of terrorism on the internet in Russia in 2022, with 26 leading to sentencing so far.

Ukrainian tank crews have arrived in the United Kingdom to begin training.

The UK is sending at least 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine.

"The UK will provide Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine alongside global partner nations - demonstrating the strength of support for Ukraine, internationally," the British Ministry of Defence wrote on Twitter, sharing images of the crews' arrival.

As an anticipated spring offensive by Russia's forces looms, Ukraine is racing to train its military on new Western weapons.

The Ukrainian military reported more fighting and Russian missile strikes along the eastern front of the conflict this week.

Moscow's forces pounded the town of Vuhledar, located in the Donetsk region, with nearly 300 rockets and artillery shells in one day, according to a Ukrainian military spokesperson.

Ukraine also said its troops were engaged in "fierce fighting" around the eastern city of Bakhmut this week, and that its military has withdrawn from the nearby town of Soledar.

This map shows the latest:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the supply of long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, “vital” in his nightly address Saturday.

The surface-to-surface missiles can fly around 200 miles, about four times the distance of the rockets used by the HIMARS mobile systems the US began sending to Ukraine four months ago.

Zelensky said an attack on the city of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region earlier Saturday left three people dead and 14 others wounded. He called the shelling “a daily occurrence” on Ukraine’s territories and said, “there can be no taboos in the supply of weapons to protect against Russian terror.”

The US has refused to send ATACMS to Ukraine out of concern they could be used to attack targets inside Russia.

New sanctions: Zelensky also mentioned that he put into effect new sanctions on “185 legal entities and individuals that Russia uses to transport personnel and military equipment by railroad.”

Pressure on Olympic Committee: The Ukrainian president wrote a letter to the presidents of the International Sports Federations with a call to reconsider the decision of the International Olympic Committee to allow the return of Russian athletes at international competitions.

Once “Russian athletes appear at international competitions, it is only a matter of time before they start justifying Russia's aggression and using the symbols of terror,” Zelensky argued.

He called the International Olympic Committee decision “an unprincipled flexibility.”