February 21, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeated his criticism of the expansion of the NATO military alliance, which he has repeatedly used as an excuse for the invasion of Ukraine. 

"We have been open, frank and sincere in wanting an open dialogue with the West and we have said many times that the world needs indivisible security and we invited all countries of the world to talk about that," Putin said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow.

"But as a response, all we got was a hypocritical, incomprehensible reply, as well as quite substantive, concrete actions — the expansion of NATO — the so-called umbrella of defense of our country and Central Asia."

"They are not going to stop. The threat continues every day," Putin said. "And they're preparing for bloodshed in the Donbas."

The Donbas comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine.

"The elite of the West does not conceal their ambitions, which is to strategically defeat Russia. What does that mean? It means to finish yourself once and for all," Putin said. "They do that by making local conflicts into much wider and bigger ones."

Putin added that the United States in particular sees the conflict in Ukraine "as an anti-Russian project."

"The aim is to seize these historically Russian lands from us," Putin added. "Nothing has changed. It is just a question of a continuation of the same policy."

Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not monitor US President Joe Biden’s address in Poland later on Tuesday but would be "informed of the main theses," according to state media TASS.

Biden is now in Poland to meet with President Andrzej Duda and will deliver a major speech to mark the one-year anniversary of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. 

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Biden's surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday was "not seen as an "extraordinary event for Russia," TASS reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin began his address to the Federal Assembly with a familiar refrain: Russia had no choice but to attack Ukraine.

Putin claimed that the West was preparing to turn Ukraine into a launchpad bristling with weapons to attack Russia, meaning that Moscow had to act before it could do so.

This echoes his speech from February 24 last year, when he argued that Russia had no choice but to use force against Ukraine.

"They did not leave us any other option for defending Russia and our people, other than the one we are forced to use today," he said.

"In these circumstances, we have to take bold and immediate action. The people’s republics of Donbas have asked Russia for help."

On Tuesday, Putin said that Russia has done "everything possible" to resolve the conflict peacefully, and accused the West of turning a blind eye to "terrorist activity" in eastern Ukraine.

Putin also repeated the unsubstantiated claim that Ukraine was pushing to be provided with nuclear weapons, and doubled down on his framing of the invasion as a pre-emptive, defensive action.

He went on to double down on blaming the West for the war in Ukraine.

"I want to repeat: it was they who unleashed the war," said Putin. "And we used and continue to use force to stop it."

A Russian cluster munition strike, which was carried out against a crowded train station in Ukraine’s eastern city Kramatorsk last April, was “in violation of the laws of war, and was an apparent war crime,” according to a new report by Human Rights Watch and SITU Research.

Over 50 people, including five children, died in the strike on the Kramatorsk railway station on April 8, which at the time was being used to shelter civilians fleeing the fighting, according to Ukrainian officials. 

According to the report, several hundred civilians were waiting at the station when “a ballistic missile equipped with a cluster munition warhead exploded and released dozens of bomblets, or submunitions.”

First responders, station volunteers and ordinary citizens described trying to stop serious bleeding with “diapers” as ambulances rushed to the scene. 

In the days before the strike, “tens of thousands” of people from the Eastern Donbas traveled through the station “as part of an evacuation encouraged and facilitated by local authorities,” according to the report.  

The United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) prohibits cluster munitions due to their "humanitarian impact on civilians," but neither Russia or Ukraine are state parties to this treaty.

“The Russian commanders responsible for ordering the attack, which used an inherently indiscriminate weapon in a well-known major evacuation hub, should be investigated and held accountable,” the report continued.

The Russian Ministry of Defense routinely denies attacking civilians, despite ample evidence collected by international media and watchdog groups.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is addressing the country's Federal Assembly.

He is expected to deliver some of his most substantive remarks to date on what the Kremlin calls the "special military operation" — last year's unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has called on Russia and Ukraine to facilitate this month’s rotation of independent experts at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been delayed for more than two weeks. 

Skirmishes near the nuclear plant in southern Ukraine have taken place intermittently since Russia invaded in late February and seized the facility days later. Intense shelling near the complex last summer sparked concerns of a nuclear accident, prompting the IAEA to send a team of three rotating experts to oversee operations there.

“The nuclear safety and security situation in Ukraine — especially at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — continues to be dangerous and unpredictable,” Grossi said.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin is expected to address the country's Federal Assembly today, delivering what are expected to be some of his most substantive remarks to date on what the Kremlin calls the "special military operation" — last year's unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

State television is already counting down to the speech, which will be the first time Putin addresses both houses of parliament in almost two years. According to Russian state news agency TASS, the last speech in this format was in April 2021.

The address is an annual event prescribed by the Russian constitution, and it's easy to speculate on the reason for hitting pause last year: The war in Ukraine was not going to plan. Putin also skipped his annual marathon press conference and Q&A with Russian citizens.

What should we expect? Well, if the past is any guide, we can expect it to be long-winded. Putin's annual press conferences often ran for hours, and the Kremlin leader preceded the invasion of Ukraine with a lengthy, rambling lecture about (his version of) history.

We can similarly expect Putin to list his traditional grievances, including NATO's expansion and what he sees as existential threats to Russian statehood. It will also have a Russia-centric theme. According to the Kremlin, participants of the war in Ukraine will be in attendance, but foreign guests or representatives will not be invited.

A Russian court on Tuesday jailed two people accused of plotting to destroy a railway near the Ukrainian border, marking the first convictions under new sabotage legislation enacted last year in the wake of Russia's invasion.

The court ordered the two people to serve three and half years each in a penal colony, TASS reported. It did not name them.

TASS said the alleged plot "was planned in the national interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).”

“The criminals planned to destroy a section of the railroad near the village of Tomarovka in Yakovlevsky district, causing the train to derail and damage military and railway equipment, with casualties among servicemen," TASS said. "They wanted to film the whole thing and post it on the internet."

Belgorod, located on the route from Moscow to Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, has been a hub of supplies and personnel that have powered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The last time President Joe Biden spoke from the courtyard of the Royal Castle in Poland, the content of his 27-minute speech was mostly obscured by what he ad-libbed about Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end.

“For God’s sake,” he proclaimed, “this man cannot remain in power.”

Nearly a year later, Biden returns to the Royal Castle this week to mark the anniversary of a war that has increasingly put him directly at odds with the Russian leader, a Cold War dynamic underscored by Biden’s highly secretive visit to Kyiv a day earlier.

Standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden used his very presence in the Ukrainian capital to taunt Putin for failing in his ambitions to invade and control the country.

If there was ever a point when Biden and his aides hoped to avoid personalizing the Ukraine conflict, it was over long before this week’s anniversary. Biden has declared Putin a “war criminal” and a “pure thug,” accusing Russia of genocide and, in his castle speech, making an implicit call for regime change.

Yet this week’s carefully planned choreography is striking nonetheless in its overt pitting of Biden against his counterpart in the Kremlin. On Tuesday, each will again engage in a remote rhetorical contest, delivering important speeches to mark one year since Russia launched its invasion.

From the Warsaw castle, Biden intends to recommit to supporting Ukraine, even as the costs mount and public support appears to wane. And in Moscow, Putin will deliver a major speech to the Federal Assembly, in which he will discuss his own views of the ongoing war, which US and European officials believe has reached an important juncture.

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