February 19, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Russia’s ambassador to the United States has labeled accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine an “excuse” made up by Washington to escalate the conflict.

On Saturday both US Vice-President Kamala Harris and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had determined Russia had committed crimes against humanity.

According to state news agency TASS, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov responded by saying: "We consider such insinuations as an attempt, unprecedented in terms of its cynicism, to demonize Russia in the course of a hybrid war, unleashed against us. There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks is to justify Washington’s own actions to fuel the Ukrainian crisis."

The ambassador accused the US of saying one thing and acting "in the opposite direction" by supplying Ukraine with heavy armorment, intelligence and training. "How can we trust the West and try to come to any type of agreement after all these statements and actions?" the diplomat said.

Anatoly Antonov also accused US of "turning a blind eye to the atrocities of the Zelensky regime," such as "the horrific scenes of the shootings of unarmed captured Russian soldiers."

Harris’ speech at the Munich Security Conference, days before the anniversary of Moscow's invasion, cited evidence of indiscriminate Russian attacks that deliberately targeted civilians, including the bombing of a maternity hospital that killed a pregnant mother and of a theater in Mariupol, where hundreds were killed.

The vice president spoke of the horrific images out of Bucha that showed men and women shot and left to rot in the streets and reports by the United Nations of a 4-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by a Russian soldier.

Anna Yezerova, a Ukrainian national, arrived in the United States last year with her young daughter and a couple of months of summer clothes. Their hope: that the war in Ukraine would be over soon.

Nearly one year later, Yezerova remains in the US and is setting down roots in New Jersey, trying to chart out a life she never envisioned for herself.

“I have never dreamed of moving abroad,” Yezerova told CNN. “We started everything from nothing.”

President Joe Biden’s visit to Poland this week is expected to again put into sharp focus the Ukrainian refugee crisis and the need for humanitarian support in addition to security assistance. 

Poland was among the countries that took in millions of refugees as Russia invaded Ukraine.

But as Russia’s war in their country slogs on, Ukrainian refugees in the US who were once optimistic they would return to their homeland within two years are coming to grips with the fact that they’re probably not going back and having to wrestle with their legal status in the US.

Read the full story here.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US Vice President Kamala Harris concurred during their meeting at the Munich Security Conference that the war in Ukraine is global in scale.

“They agreed that Putin’s war in Ukraine is a global war, both in terms of its impact on food and energy security and in terms of its implications for internationally accepted norms like sovereignty. The prime minister and Vice President Harris condemned those countries who have supported Putin’s efforts politically and militarily," according to a Downing Street spokesperson.

Downing Street added that the pair also discussed how to increase international action on Ukraine to secure peace for the future.

"They agreed on the importance of thinking beyond Ukraine’s immediate needs to how the international community can ensure Ukraine never faces the same threats again," the spokesperson said.

The eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Kharkiv faced more attacks from Russian forces Saturday, as newly drafted Russian soldiers appear to be replacing Wagner fighters, local military leaders said.

“The number of the Wagners has significantly decreased nowadays compared to what we saw a few months ago. Most likely they were killed in the Bakhmut and Soledar sectors,” Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk region military administration, wrote on Telegram.

Hayday added that the eastern city of Kreminna is one of the areas seeing the most fighting, saying that "the overall situation is difficult but fully controlled. The number of attacks and shelling of our positions has indeed increased."

Russian forces are jamming Ukrainian drone signals while also deploying suicide squads to detect Ukrainian forces’ positions, according to Hayday.

In Kharkiv: Towns in the Kharkiv region, northwest of Luhansk, were also shelled by Russian forces on Saturday, killing one civilian and injuring two, according to Oleh Synehubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration.

Gen. David Petraeus told CNN he believes Ukrainian troops will be able to push Russian forces further back this summer, contingent on arms supply and strategy.

It will take successful combined arms warfare — a complementary approach where multiple kinds of fighting units support one another — to succeed, Petraeus told CNN's Nic Robertson at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

"If you cut that, you can start the isolation of Crimea, you can reduce it as a logistical support hub, and then you can divide the Russian forces. And then if you can take down the Kerch Strait bridge, you've really isolated them," he added.

Petraeus said if that scenario plays out, combined with long-range weapons for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), there'd be a "very different dynamic" in the conflict.

If Russian losses continue to pile up, "at some point, the Kremlin has to recognize this war is unsustainable on the battlefield. And if you continue to tighten the economic, financial and export controls, you make it unsustainable (on) the homefront as well," he said.

He also said Ukrainians being trained on Western weapons seem to be doing so at remarkable speed.

Ukrainian troops are receiving training on Leopard 2 tanks in Poland, the UK government said earlier this month that it will begin training Ukrainian pilots on NATO-standard fighter jets, and the first group of Ukrainians completed training at a US base in Germany on Friday.

"I think they will be able to achieve the kind of combined arms effects that the Russians have not achieved," Petraeus reiterated.

CNN's Cristiana Moisescu contributed to this report.