February 3, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Russian shelling left two people dead and injured another eight in Donetsk over the last 24 hours, as the battle for control of the eastern Ukrainian region escalates.

One of the deaths was reported in Bakhmut, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration. Two other people were wounded in the city.

A multi-story building, a private house and a shop were also damaged in Bakhmut, he said. 

The situation "remains tense" in several villages, including Paraskoviivka, Razdolivka and Vasyukivka, near the Russian-controlled town of Soledar, Kyrylenko added. 

Some context: Moscow has launched relentless attacks on eastern Ukraine in recent days, after a top Kyiv official said Russia is preparing for a “maximum escalation” of the nearly year-long war in Ukraine.

“These will be defining months in the war,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Sky News in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

“I’m conscious the main fights are yet to come and they will happen this year, within two to three months,” he said.

“Russia is preparing for maximum escalation. It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training. When it comes to an offensive from different directions, as of now, I can say that we are not excluding any scenario in the next two to three weeks.”

CNN's Jack Guy, Yulia Kesaieva, Mick Krever, Jonny Hallam and Josh Pennington contributed reporting.

EU leaders are in Kyiv for a summit with Ukraine, the first such summit to take place since Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade the country.

The two parties will talk about multiple things, from European military and humanitarian support to further action against Russia.

Top of the agenda, however, will be talks about Ukraine joining the EU. On this, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is likely to be left disappointed. Yes, the EU has accepted Ukraine as a candidate state. Yes, Europe has broadly rallied to support Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression. But joining the EU is a complicated, lengthy process that, no matter how urgent Ukraine’s wishes, cannot be sped up.

Ahead of the summit, Zelensky announced a widespread crackdown on corruption in Ukraine. It’s no secret that the scale of corruption in his country would make joining the EU any time soon difficult, so the move is to be welcomed. But while Ukraine is still at war, it’s going to be very difficult for the EU to properly assess how much this action has achieved.

Perhaps more importantly, the people in Kyiv are representatives from the European institutions rather than the heads of government.

Anything complicated in the EU -- and countries joining is about the most complicated -- requires the agreement of all 27 members. This can takes over 10 years. They don’t just have to agree on a country joining, they have to agree that the candidate country has met all sorts of criteria through a series of votes that in some cases has to be approved back in domestic parliaments of member states. And with member states almost always disagreeing over some issue or another, these votes can be used as bargaining chips.

So, in a nutshell, the EU can promise Ukraine more support among other things Kyiv might want right now. But on the big question, even the heads of the institutions are at the mercy of domestic European politics.

Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv on Friday morning as EU leaders are expected to hold a summit with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital. 

European leaders plan to discuss additional financial and military support for Ukraine to fight Russia's invasion.

On Thursday, Zelensky said he had productive talks with the commission leader, Ursula von der Leyen, and members of the College of the European Commission. 

The death toll from Russian missile strikes on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Thursday has risen to four, with 18 others injured, Ukrainian officials said Friday.

On Thursday, two S-300 missiles were fired at the center of the city in the Donetsk region, landing about a minute apart and less than a hundred meters from a CNN team.

Four others were killed in a Russian missile attack Wednesday in the same area — an entirely residential zone with shops, a hospital and a clinic.

Rescue and recovery operations have now been completed, Ukraine's Emergency Service said Friday.

Russia's response: Moscow's Defense Ministry said the strikes against Kramatorsk had destroyed a long-range HIMARS artillery system. But it is inconceivable the Ukrainians would keep such a high-value weapon in such a public place given its size; they have gone to great lengths to disguise their locations, even building replicas.

Two people were killed and nine others injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine's southern Kherson region over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said Friday.

The Kherson regional military administration said a 5-year-old boy was wounded in the strikes and taken to hospital.

It did not say where the casualties had occurred but added that Russian forces had attacked civilian settlements in the region some 65 times over the past 24 hours.

Russia is bringing its war against Ukraine closer to the industrial cities of Donetsk with a series of missile strikes against densely populated areas.

On Thursday, two S-300 missiles were fired at the center of the city of Kramatorsk, landing about a minute apart and less than a hundred meters from a CNN team.

An earlier Iskander missile strike had killed four people and hospitalized several more in the same area — an entirely residential zone with shops, a hospital and a clinic. One of those killed was a well-respected school principal, Hanna Valeriivna, weeks before her 48th birthday.

Rescue crews still at the scene had no warning of Thursday’s attack. CNN witnessed the second missile’s last moments in flight before a large fire erupted and smoke billowed into the air.

There were no further fatalities, though at least five civilians were injured. Some people ran in panic from the scene; others seemed fatalistic. “Of course, we are frightened,” said Natalia, a middle-aged woman cowering in a doorway. “But what option do we have?”

Read the full story:

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When Antony Blinken touches down in Beijing in the coming days for the first visit to China by a US secretary of state since 2018, he will be cutting a stark contrast to the scene in the Chinese capital one year earlier.

Then, Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the opening of the Beijing Olympics — meeting for talks and dinner in Putin’s honor, and declaring a “no limits” partnership between the two neighbors.

Weeks later, as Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine starting an invasion that would devastate the country and cause a humanitarian crisis, Chinese leaders did not shrink from that declaration.

Though Beijing claimed impartiality in the conflict and no advance knowledge of Russia’s intent, it also refused to condemn Moscow. Instead, it parroted Kremlin lines blaming NATO for provoking the conflict — further fracturing relationships with both Europe and the US.

A year on, the contrast of Blinken’s visit is no coincidence. Economically drained by its now-abandoned zero-Covid strategy, Beijing has been softening its tone on foreign affairs and upping its diplomacy with Western governments, analysts say, in a bid to win back lost ground and stabilize its relations.

In meetings with Blinken during his expected early February trip — as well as European leaders who’ve signaled they may visit in the coming months — Chinese counterparts are likely to emphasize their long-standing calls for a peaceful resolution and play up what they claim is China’s “objective and impartial position” on the conflict, analysts say.

But while the optics may be different from this time last year, China’s support for Russia — when measured by its annual trade, diplomatic engagements and schedule of joint military exercises — tells a different story.

Read the full analysis here.

A former senior Russian army officer says he saw his comrades torturing prisoners of war in Ukraine, in a rare eyewitness account from within Moscow’s ranks to address widespread allegations of Russian war crimes.

Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday, former Lt. Konstantin Yefremov said he witnessed a deputy commander torturing prisoners of war and threatening them with sexual violence, adding that no one dared to speak out against the officer for fear he would attack them too.

“Besides, he was drunk nonstop, and he was driving around the nearby villages where there were other prisoners of war. As far as I know, there were about 20 others, Ukrainian prisoners of war,” he said.

Yefremov is the most senior Russian officer to speak openly about what he saw in Ukraine.

He is now hoping the United States will grant him asylum after he fled Russia last month following his dismissal from the military for refusing to return to Ukraine.

Read the full story here.

The CIA assesses that the next six months will be “absolutely crucial” in determining the final outcome of the war in Ukraine, agency Director Bill Burns said Thursday. 

The Russian leader, Burns said, is “betting that he can make time work for him.” Putin believes that he can “grind down” Ukraine, while political fatigue will grip Europe and the United States will become distracted, Burns said.

But Burns said he told one of his Russian counterparts, Sergey Naryshkin, in November that “that Russian calculation is as deeply flawed as the original decision to go to war last Feb. 24 was.”