February 14, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

As fighting continues in Ukraine, an unlikely group is fighting to defend the country from Vladimir Putin’s attacks.

Known as the Free Russia Legion, the group is made entirely of Russian soldiers.

Lynsey Addario, a New York Times photojournalist, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday the group is motivated “by various reasons.”

“They believe Russia should not have invaded Ukraine and they feel that it’s their way of standing up to what they feel is an unjust war, so it’s really a moral sort of stand,” she said, citing the work of Michael Schwirtz, NYT investigative reporter. “Then, there are, of course, Russians who have lived in Ukraine for a long time and they feel like they want to fight on behalf of the Ukrainians and then there’s just, of course, people who detest Putin and want to sort of free their country from his leadership.”

Addario, who recently returned from a trip documenting the Ukrainian frontlines, said Russian forces “really would like to target” members of the Free Russia Legion “because they’re their own countrymen fighting for the enemy.”

In a photo Addario captured during her visit, she recalled the story of one of the group’s members named Zaza.

“Zaza looked like a baby. He was incredibly young,” she remembered. “Zaza talked about how he just didn’t believe in his country fighting this war and he made a decision finally to just walk across the border into Ukraine and offer himself up to fight for the Ukrainian military.”

Alex Potter, the wife of an American aid worker killed in Ukraine, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday she believes Russian forces were targeting medics in the attack earlier this month that took her husband’s life.

“They were targeting medical providers who were unarmed in a civilian vehicle — a marked ambulance,” she said. “It was a very insidious incident.”

Pete Reed, an American volunteer aid worker and former US Marine, was killed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on February 2 while working with the medical aid group, Global Outreach Doctors. Video footage from the scene, shown to CNN, shows the incoming missile hitting Reed’s team’s makeshift ambulance. Munitions experts have examined the video and identified the weapon as an anti-tank guided missile, according to Potter.

Simon Johnsen, a medic from Norway, described the attack as a prime example of Russia targeting medics and frontline helpers in so-called “double-taps,” or hitting a target, waiting a few minutes for first responders to arrive and then hitting the same spot again.

Despite numerous strikes on medical workers and facilities over the course of this war, Russia has denied deliberately targeting civilians. The Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Potter said her husband was in the country to administer “direct medical care to injured civilians,” adding that he also had created a coalition in Ukraine designed to bring people together.

She described her late husband as “charismatic and outgoing.” The two married just days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

“He was just the best person, really,” Potter said. “Everyone thought that he was their best friend because he was so attentive and so listening and so present with anybody. You know, even if he was working with like multiple computers and two phones and had 50 messages that were in his inbox, if someone needed to come up and talk to him, including myself, he was always very present and put his whole heart into everything.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the situation in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions remains extremely difficult.

“Those are literally battles for every meter of Ukrainian land,” Zelensky said in his daily address Tuesday. “We must appreciate the significance of those battles. Every meter won there means the defense of our entire country.”

“Every day that our heroes have stood up in Bakhmut, in Vuhledar, in Maryinka, and in other cities and communities in Donbas reduces the duration of Russian aggression by weeks. This is where the unprecedented destruction of Russian potential is happening now,” Zelensky added. “The enemy will not be able to regain anything they lose in our Donbas.” 

Earlier, the Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces are continuing air and ground offensives near Bakhmut, Shakhtarsk, Avdiivka and other towns in the Donetsk region. 

Russian rockets hit civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk region in two separate attacks, resulting in several wounded civilians, it said.

Russian forces are carrying out air and ground offensives in eastern Ukraine near Bakhmut, Shakhtarsk, and other towns in the Donetsk region, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Tuesday. 

“The enemy continues to concentrate their main efforts at assaulting in the Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Shakhtarsk directions,” the military said in one of its regular updates. “Enemy aircraft are actively operating.”

The General Staff also said Russian rockets hit civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk region in two separate attacks, resulting in several wounded civilians. 

Meanwhile, the head of Russia’s Wagner private military company on Tuesday warned that the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was far from imminent. Despite months of intense battle, Wagner and Russian forces have failed to capture Bakhmut, though they are slowly pushing toward encircling the city.

Fewer than 5,000 civilians remain in Bakhmut, the head of Ukraine’s Donetsk region military administration said on Tuesday. 

Catch up on other key recent developments in the war:

During his daily address Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Western allies that “efficiency is essential” as Kyiv continues to battle Russia on the front lines.

Zelensky spoke about the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, saying “we have another strong decision for the defense of our country.” 

“More air defense systems have been confirmed by our partners. More tanks have been confirmed. More artillery and shells have been confirmed. More training for our military has been confirmed,” Zelensky said.

He continued by arguing that “efficiency is essential,” saying that “the speed saves lives, the speed brings back safety.”

“Much of the agreements and discussions should be left behind closed doors at the Contact Group meetings. However, I can say with certainty that the fundamental trends remain unchanged. Ukraine and its partners are jointly doing their utmost to make the terrorist state lose. To make it happen as soon as possible,” Zelensky said. 

Zelensky added that the “Kremlin is trying to squeeze out all the possible aggression potential from Russia,” adding, “They’re in a rush. For they know that the world is stronger.”

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola expressed the parliament’s “unwavering solidarity” with Moldova on Tuesday. 

“On behalf of the European Parliament, I would like to express our unwavering solidarity with the Republic of Moldova and our trust in Moldova’s pro-European leadership,” read a letter published on Metsola’s official Twitter account and addressed to Moldova’s President Maia Sandu.

“We are well aware of the difficult domestic situation and geopolitical context your country is facing, exacerbated by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine,” Metsola said.

More on this: On Monday, Sandu accused Russia of planning to use “saboteurs” to destabilize the former Soviet republic, echoing a claim made days earlier by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The place of the Republic of Moldova is with us, in the European family,” Metsola added. 

Moldova and Ukraine were granted candidate status for EU membership last June. 

In remarks published by Russian state news agency TASS on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the West is trying to turn Moldova into “another Ukraine.”

The Russian government is operating an expansive network of dozens of camps where it has held thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of the war against Ukraine last year, according to a new report released Tuesday. 

The report contains disturbing new details about the extent of Moscow’s efforts to relocate, re-educate, and sometimes militarily train or forcibly adopt out Ukrainian children – actions that constitute war crimes and could provide evidence that Russia’s actions amount to genocide, it says.

The report was produced as a part of the work of the US State Department-backed Conflict Observatory by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. The Observatory was established last year to gather evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

“All levels of Russia’s government are involved,” Yale Humanitarian Research Lab’s Nathaniel Raymond told reporters Tuesday.

“Consider this report a gigantic Amber Alert that we are issuing on Ukraine’s children,” he said.

CNN has asked Russia’s embassy in Washington for comment.

The report found that more than 6,000 children — ranging in age from mere months old to 17 — have been in Russian custody at some point during the course of the nearly year-long war, although the “total number of children is not known and is likely significantly higher than 6,000.” 

It identified 43 facilities that are a part of the network, which “stretches from one end of Russia to the other,” including Russian-occupied Crimea, the “eastern Pacific Coast - closer to Alaska than it is to Moscow,” and Siberia, Raymond said. 

“The primary purpose of the camps appears to be political reeducation,” he said, noting that at least 32 of the facilities identified in the report “appear to be engaged in systematic re-education efforts that expose children from Ukraine to Russia-centric academic, cultural, patriotic, and in two cases, specifically military education.”

Read more about this here.

Russia is trying to deprive Ukrainians of access to water supplies — with dangerous implications for water storage facilities needed to operate nuclear power plants — Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday. 

“We are losing thousands of cubic meters of water due to the Kakhovka HPP [Hydroelectric Power Plant] floodgates being partially damaged and then intentionally opened by the Russians,” Shmyhal said in a Telegram post. “Some of the settlements that are getting water from the Dnipro river may be left without access to drinking water.” 

Shmyhal said the threat to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants is even bigger, adding, “A drop in the water level in the storage facility could lead to improper operation of cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia NPP.”

Shmyhal noted that the threat to water supplies follows repeated attacks on Ukraine’s power grid. 

“The civilized world should not keep silence,” Shmyhal added. “Ukraine calls for all available means to put pressure on Russia to close the floodgates and restore the hydraulic structures at the Kakhovka HPP or let Ukrainian technicians do it.”

Disruptions to Ukraine’s water supply have been an ongoing and wide-reaching issue since the Russian invasion. 

In December, CNN reported that Russia’s persistent and pervasive attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid had, at least temporarily, left millions of civilians without electricity, heat, water and other critical services in the bitter winter months. Meanwhile in November, one of Ukraine’s largest state hospitals was “on the verge of evacuating” some patients after it lost water supply because of Russian air strikes, a regional official told CNN. 

With previous reporting from CNN’s Olga Voitovych, Sophie Tanno, and Gabriel Kinder.

An EU “working group” will be set up to look at using frozen Russian assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union said on Tuesday.

The group will carry out a “legal, financial, economic and political analysis of the possibilities of using frozen Russian assets,” the Swedish presidency’s statement said.

Part of this work will involve obtaining a “clearer picture” of where Russian state-owned assets are located and their total value, the statement added.

“In principle, it is clear-cut: Russia must pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. At the same time, this poses difficult questions. This must be done in accordance with EU and international law, and there is currently no direct model for this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said. 

The group will be chaired by Anders Ahnlid, director-general of Sweden’s National Board of Trade.

Sweden currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU, which rotates among EU members every six months.

Many Russian soldiers have a “low level of readiness” after undergoing shortened basic training, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Tuesday. 

“The gross of the Russian military is undergoing a basic three-week training course. Some of the groups are being trained for two weeks. Therefore there’s a low level of readiness for task performance,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in one of its regular updates.

The General Staff also claimed that Ukrainian Forces on Tuesday carried out eight air strikes on Russian personnel and military equipment, adding that “missile and artillery units hit the area of manpower concentration, three ammunition depots and two enemy electronic warfare stations.” 

A British national has died in Ukraine, the United Kingdom’s foreign office said on Tuesday. 

“We are supporting the family of a British national who died in Ukraine, and are in contact with the local authorities,” a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said. 

The family of the unidentified British national has requested privacy, according to the foreign office, which continues to advise against all travel to Ukraine. 

Russian forces are carrying out air and ground offensives in eastern Ukraine near Bakhmut, Shakhtarsk, and other towns in the Donetsk region, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Tuesday. 

“The enemy continues to concentrate their main efforts at assaulting in the Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Shakhtarsk directions,” the military said in one of its regular updates. “Enemy aircraft are actively operating.”

“The enemy conducted air strikes near Avdiivka and Vuhledar,” the Ukrainian General Staff claimed. “Moreover, the occupiers dropped non-lethal K-51 aerosol grenades from a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] on the positions of our troops near Vodiane.”

The General Staff also said Russian rockets hit civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk region in two separate attacks, resulting in several wounded civilians. 

“The Palace of Culture which is operating as a humanitarian aid center was damaged. A medical facility was damaged as well,” according to the update. 

In the south: The update also said several people were wounded in Russian shelling on civilian facilities in Kherson city, Beryslav, and Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region, adding that “enemy shells have damaged multi-story buildings as well as private houses.” 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday NATO allies, working closely with the EU, will continue supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes” so that Kyiv can “uphold its right to self-defense.”

“NATO allies are providing unprecedented support to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said as he opened a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels. “Today we will discuss our continued support, which is essential to help Ukraine prevail as an independent sovereign state and to uphold the international rules-based order.”

“President Putin made two strategic mistakes — he underestimated the strength and the bravery of the people of Ukraine and its armed forces, and he underestimated the resolve and unity of NATO and our partners,” Stoltenberg added. 

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov are also attending the meeting. 

During his opening remarks, Stoltenberg asked the audience to stand up for a moment of silence in solidarity with the victims of the deadly earthquake that rocked Turkey and Syria. 

Fewer than 5,000 civilians remain in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the head of Ukraine’s Donetsk region military administration said on Tuesday. 

”
[Evacuations] are literally taking place under constant shelling, and armored capsules are saving the evacuation crews,” said regional military head Pavlo Kyrylenko in a television interview, adding that “the number of people staying in Bakhmut should be minimized, and the military should do their job.”

Entry to Bakhmut is restricted for civilians who are not locals, but people who are registered there are able to leave and enter the city. 

Kyrylenko also noted that more than 12,000 children have been evacuated from Bakhmut. 

“There are less than 140 children,” he said. “Children from orphanages, children from difficult families whose parents were deprived of parental rights — all such children were evacuated.”

Regarding the ability of volunteer organizations to reach the city, Kyrylenko added, “The residents have everything they need, stock of food and water. If we see that delivery is necessary, we will do it through military administration.”

Bakhmut remains the focus of Russia’s main attacks, according to one official for the Eastern Grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who spoke to CNN on Monday. 

In mid-January, CNN reported that Ukrainian officials said perhaps only 10% of the pre-war population remains in Bakhmut. On the western side of the city, which slopes down to a valley out of view of Russian positions, some civilians have been trying to carry on as best they can.

With previous reporting from Ben Wedeman, Kosta Gak and Kareem Khadder

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday met with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly in Kyiv, where he says the pair discussed further security and defense cooperation.

“We talked about the priority needs of the Defense Forces of Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post following the meeting. “Further cooperation in the field of security and defense was discussed in detail. Canada’s support of the Ukrainian army is invaluable in these turbulent times for us.”

“I highly appreciate the warm attitude of your society towards Ukrainians, towards our people who came to Canada. You help us not only on the battlefield but also financially, in the energy sector,” Zelensky added in a news release. “I also want to note the political support of Ukraine, in particular at the United Nations.”

Zelensky and Joly also discussed steps to be taken to aid Ukraine’s reconstruction and the issue of demining areas of Ukraine where fighting took place, according to the press release. 

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that they are not seeing Russia “massing its aircraft” ahead of an aerial operation against Ukraine.

“In terms of whether or not Russia is massing its aircraft for some massive aerial attack, we don’t currently see that. We do know that Russia has a substantial number of aircraft in its inventory and a lot of capability left,” he said. “That’s why we’ve emphasized that we need to do everything that we can to get Ukraine as much air defense capability as we possibly can.” 

Austin spoke from Brussels, where he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley are meeting with other defense leaders in the ninth Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting since the beginning of Russia’s invasion almost one year ago.

A little less than a year since Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has “lost strategically, operationally, and tactically,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley said from Brussels on Tuesday.

“Putin thought he could defeat Ukraine quickly, fracture the NATO alliance, and act with impunity. He was wrong,” the top US general said. “Ukraine remains free, they remain independent. NATO and this coalition has never been stronger, and Russia is now a global pariah. And the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience. In short, Russia has lost — they’ve lost strategically, operationally, and tactically, and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield.”

Milley and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are in Brussels for the ninth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, to discuss ongoing support for Ukraine as it fights against Russia.

Milley said on Tuesday that until Putin “ends his war of choice,” the international community “will continue to support Ukraine with the equipment and the capabilities it needs to defend itself.”

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he expects to see Ukraine conduct an offensive in the spring.

“What Ukraine wants to do at the first possible moment is to establish or create momentum and establish conditions on the battlefield that continue to be in its favor,” he said in a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday.

“And so we expect to see them conduct an offensive sometime in the spring and because of that we are, we all of the partners in in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, have been working hard to ensure that they have the armored capability, the fires, the sustainment to be able to be effective in creating the effects on the battlefield that they want to create,” he said.  

Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley are in Brussels for the ninth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which focuses on providing support to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Austin is also participating in a meeting with NATO’s defense ministers. The one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion is just over a week away.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, one of the biggest surprises has been the willingness with which Western countries have handed over increasingly sophisticated military equipment for Ukrainian use, especially considering the the fact that these donations have left European militaries’ stock cupboards looking rather bare, according to defense officials and experts.

It’s hard to get exact numbers on exactly what weapons individual nations currently hold in their arsenals due to the sensitivity of the information. But multiple European defense and security sources have told CNN that there are serious concerns at just how much of Europe’s ammunition has been used on the battlefield and not replaced. Even the biggest supplier of weapons to Ukraine and the world’s top military exporter, the United States, is having trouble keeping up with the demand, as CNN reported late last year.

On Monday night, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of a meeting of alliance officials that “the current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production – this puts our defense industries under strain.”

How we got here: Decades of budget cuts across Europe have led to policy makers keeping a deliberately low stock on the assumption that there would not be a land war that could swallow up ammunition at similar levels to World War I or II, experts said.

“The combination of no immediate threat and the financial pressures on European governments over the past couple of decades led to a conspiracy of dressing the shop window while letting the stockroom empty out,” said Nick Witney, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The picture European defense officials paint is a grim one. No one wants publicly to say that supporting Ukraine has caused problems, but the ammo crunch is coming and it will take major intervention to put right.

Of course, the vast majority of people involved in European defense at any serious level stand firmly by the support they have provided to Ukraine.

The looming ammunition crisis has, however, revealed that policymaking is often based on convenient assumptions of the best-case scenario. After all, taking no action, in the short-term at least, is often cheaper than taking action.

Brad Lendon contributed reporting for this story.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private military company on Tuesday warned that the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was far from imminent.

“Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance and grinding, the meat grinder is working,” Yevgeniy Prigozhin said in a statement distributed on a Wagner Telegram channel. “For the meat grinder to work properly, it is impossible to suddenly start festivities. There won’t be any festivities anytime soon.”

Despite months of intense battle, Wagner and Russian forces have failed to capture Bakhmut, though they are slowly pushing towards encircling the city.

And yet, Prigozhin cautioned that that was anything but imminent. He was responding to a question about whether Wagner forces had captured a small portion of northern Bakhmut.

“I don’t understand where this nonsense comes from,” he said. “In all directions, the enemy is becoming more active, pulling up more and more new reserves. Daily 300 to 500 new fighters approach Bakhmut in all directions. Artillery fire intensifies with each day.”

“To date, heavy fighting is going on in the north. There are no prerequisites for encircling the enemy in the northern regions. Attack is carried out house by house, square meter by square meter. We are seeing the full-blown military engagement. It is just not clear where all these stories about some encirclement and something else come from.”

Some more context: On Sunday, Wagner claimed to have captured a small settlement north of Bakhmut, Krasna Hora. Ukrainian officials have disputed that claim. In announcing the claimed capture, Prigozhin said that “within a radius of 50 km, give or take, there are only PMC [private military company] Wagner fighters who will take Bakhmut.”

That statement caught the attention of Sergey Markov, a pro-Kremlin military blogger. 

“Official reports continuously emphasise that Artemovsk [the Soviet-era name for Bakhmut] is being taken by ‘assault groups of volunteers’ with the combat support from the Russian Army missile and aviation units,” Markov wrote. “This indicates that although the public squabble between the small but successful Wagner and not yet so successful but very large Ministry of Defense ended on the orders of the authorities, contradictions remain.”

Some degree of power struggle, Markov said, is normal.

With translation by Olena Mankovska

Russia’s Admiral Gorshkov frigate, armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles, has docked in Cape Town, South Africa, ahead of joint military drills with South Africa, Russia and China, Cape Town’s Russian Consulate said on Monday.

“The battleship arrived in the Mother City on its way to Durban where it will take part in joint [South Africa]-[China]-[Russia] naval drills scheduled for February 17-27,” the consulate said on Twitter.

Why it matters: The exercises come as Russia nears the first anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, and it is also an opportunity for Moscow to show it is not entirely isolated on the world stage, despite widespread international condemnation of the invasion.

In January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his South African counterpart Naledi Pandor defended the naval drills after they held talks in Pretoria during Lavrov’s first visit to South Africa since the invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Russian state-owned news agency TASS quoted a source close to Russia’s defense industry, saying the frigate “will perform a training launch of a Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic missile during a joint exercise with South African and Chinese navies.”

CNN’s Radina Gigova contributed reporting to this post.

Norway will send eight Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Norway’s defense minister said Tuesday.

“Norway will donate eight tanks and up to four support vehicles to Ukraine. In addition, we have earmarked funds for ammunition and spare parts,” Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram said in a news release.

“Several allied countries have also done the same,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in the news release, adding that it is “more crucial than ever to support Ukraine’s defensive battle.”

According to Gram, Norway will also contribute to the education and training of Ukrainian tank crews in Poland together with other allied countries.

“This donation is an important and much needed contribution,” Gram said.

“In addition, Norway will offer NOK 250 million ($24.7 million) for ammunition and spare parts for Leopard 2 tanks as a grant to the EU’s Ukraine fund, the European Peace Facility,” Gram added.

Gram said that the aim of Norway’s military support to Ukraine is to enable the country to defend itself against Russia’s attack.

“The country has an acute, extensive and lasting need for international support. Norway has made, and will continue to make, significant contributions to Ukraine in the years to come,” Gram said.

The announcement comes a day after Norway’s prime minister spoke with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussing “further cooperation.” Zelensky on Monday thanked Støre for the substantial five-year aid package that is being prepared for approval in Norway to support Ukraine.

CNN’s Arnaud Siad, Mick Krever and Jo Shelley contributed to this post.

Moldovan airspace has reopened following a temporary closure earlier Tuesday.

The country’s Civil Aviation Authority said that the airspace had shut “in order to ensure the safety and security of civil aviation,” but had since reopened. The authority said it would provide further details later today

Earlier Tuesday, the country’s national carrier Air Moldova announced the temporary closure of Moldovan airspace in a Facebook post.

“Today’s schedule will undergo changes,” the airline said without providing further details or any explanation for the closure. CNN has contacted Air Moldova for further information.

Some context: On Monday, Moldova’s President Maia Sandu accused Russia of planning to use “saboteurs who have undergone military training and are disguised as civilians” to destabilize the country, echoing claims made a few days earlier by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“In the past few days, there have been discussions in our society about the security of our country,” Sandu said in an address to the citizens of Moldova, published on the presidential website.

Russia’s foreign ministry on Tuesday rejected the accusations as “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

Russian forces are preparing for an assault on the Luhansk region in order to “sell” a victory to the public, according to a local Ukrainian official.

Meanwhile, Germany is set to ramp up ammunition production following a call from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

“We are seeing the start” of new Russian offensive already, Stoltenberg said at a Monday news conference in Brussels, ahead of a NATO defense ministers taking place today.

Here are the latest headlines:

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner private military company, has admitted to founding the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which the US government has sanctioned for allegedly interfering in its elections.

On Tuesday a Wagner Telegram channel published a statement from Prigozhin, asking him to react to the suggestion that he was the founder of the IRA.

“I react with pleasure,” Prigozhin said in the statement. “I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was founded to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the West.”

In 2018, the US Treasury Department sanctioned the IRA, accusing it of having “created and managed a vast number of fake online personas that posed as legitimate U.S. persons to include grassroots organizations, interest groups, and a state political party on social media.”

“Through this activity, the IRA posted thousands of ads that reached millions of people online. The IRA also organized and coordinated political rallies during the run-up to the 2016 election, all while hiding its Russian identity,” said the Treasury Department.

“Further, the IRA unlawfully utilized personally identifiable information from U.S. persons to open financial accounts to help fund IRA operations.”

Poland’s Ministry of Defense has confirmed that Dutch F-35 fighter jets were scrambled on Monday to intercept three Russian aircraft.

“Dutch F-35s stationed at the 22nd Tactical Air Base in Malbork were scrambled on Monday (February 13) in order to identify and intercept 3 Russian aircraft that were operating near Polish airspace,” the Polish Defense Ministry said in a statement sent to CNN on Tuesday. 

The defense ministry said that the F-35 fighters were operating over international waters and Polish airspace was not violated. 

“The operation was realized as a part of NATO Enhanced Air Policing which inspects the eastern flank of NATO. This was a standard operation realized in this type of situations,” the statement added.

The European Union has added Russia to its list of “non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes,” the council of the EU announced in a statement on Tuesday.

Russia has been added to the list because of new legislation adopted by the Kremlin in 2022 that went “against the good tax governance criteria” of the EU’s code of conduct, it said.

The council’s code of conduct group also found that Russia “had not fulfilled its commitment to address the harmful aspects of a special regime for international holding companies.”

Dialogue with Russia on taxation has come to “a standstill” following its invasion of Ukraine, it added.

The list was first established in 2017 and currently consists of 16 jurisdictions in total, including Panama, the Bahamas and the US Virgin Islands.

According to the EU the list “aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to promote tax good governance worldwide.”

Russia’s near-term goal is to conquer the remaining Ukrainian-controlled portion of the Luhansk region in order to have a victory to “sell” to the Russian people, according to a local Ukrainian official.

“Taking into account the fact that Luhansk region has the smallest de-occupied [Ukrainian controlled] territory – just over 10 settlements – this task seems the easiest for the Russian occupation troops,” Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk region military administration, said on national television.

“They will do their best to reach the administrative borders in order to have something to ‘sell’ to the population of the Russian Federation.”

Hayday said that the number of Russian troops in his region has increased significantly in the past weeks.

“They have been actively probing the defenses along the entire front line – from Svatove to Kreminna, plus Bilohorivka,” he said.

Hayday added that Russia is still aiming to conquer the whole of the Donbas, which comprises Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

While Russia already controls nearly all of the Luhansk region, large swaths of the Donetsk region are still in Ukrainian hands, including the important urban centers of Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, and the long-embattled city of Bakhmut.

The EU’s High Representative says the bloc is aware of the pressure that Moldova, Ukraine’s neighbor, has been put under by Moscow.

“We know how much Moldova is under the Russian pressure,” Josep Borrell told journalists on Tuesday in Brussels.

With Moldova hosting the European Political Community conference later this year, it is a “good occasion for everybody [to] show support to Moldova,” the EU’s top diplomat continued.

On Monday, Moldova’s President Maia Sandu accused Russia of planning to use “saboteurs who have undergone military training and are disguised as civilians” to destabilize the country, echoing claims made a few days earlier by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“In the past few days, there have been discussions in our society about the security of our country,” Sandu said in an address to the citizens of Moldova, published on the presidential website. 

“The statements of President Zelensky about the plans of the Russian Federation to destabilize the Republic of Moldova have been confirmed by our institutions,” she added. 

CNN is unable to independently verify this claim.

CNN’s Radina Gigova contributed reporting. 

Regaining consciousness in a cloud of smoke, Simon Johnsen heard a loud whistling in his ears. He checked to see if he still had all his body parts.

Next to him, fellow medic Pete Reed was dead. So was the civilian Ukrainian woman whose injuries they had come to treat.

It was lunchtime on Thursday, February 2, in Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and a Russian missile had struck just feet from where the two were about to administer aid.

Johnsen, a medic from Norway, and a group of other volunteers had arrived on the scene just moments earlier.

Speaking to CNN, they describe the attack as a prime example of Russia targeting medics and frontline helpers in so-called “double-taps”: hitting a target, waiting a few minutes for first responders to arrive, and then hitting the same spot again.

Video footage from the scene, shown to CNN, shows the incoming missile hitting Reed’s team’s makeshift ambulance.

Munitions experts have examined the video and identified the weapon as an anti-tank guided missile, Reed’s wife, Alex Kay Potter, told CNN after arriving back from Ukraine.

Potter believes the attack on the aid workers was the Russian military’s intent, and says that their ambulance was clearly marked.

“It wasn’t just some random artillery doubletap – they were being tracked,” she says. “They were very much targeted.”

Despite numerous strikes on medical workers and facilities over the course of this war, Russia has denied deliberately targeting civilians. The Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Read the full story here.

Germany is to increase ammunition production in light of Russia’s ramped up offensive in Ukraine, the country’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Tuesday.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels ahead of a two-day NATO Defense Ministers meeting, Pistorius highlighted Russia’s increasing efforts to “regain the initiative in the Donbas.”

The defense minister called the “issue of air defense and ammunition supply“ much “more important than fighter jets”.

This echoes remarks made by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also on Tuesday, saying that NATO’s “urgent need” is to deliver the military support it has already promised Ukraine rather than make decisions on whether to send modern fighter jets too. 

Also on Tuesday, Pistorius announced that Germany had signed contracts with ammunition manufacturers to provide for the Gepard air defense systems it has delivered to Ukraine. 

As far as other ammunition is concerned, Pistorius said he could “only ask the defense industry to ramp up production quickly.”

In light of the “possible risk of escalation,” he warned that every step taken by NATO allies has to be “weighed up” carefully. 

“I believe there will be no short-term end to the war, no short-term winner,“ Pistorius said.

Two Dutch F-35 fighter jets were scrambled to identify and intercept three aircraft flying near the Polish border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on Monday, according to the Dutch Defense Ministry.

“The at-the-time unidentified aircraft approached the Polish NATO area of responsibility from Kaliningrad,” the ministry said in a statement.

“After identification, it turned out to be three aircraft: A Russian IL-20M Coot-A that was being escorted by two SU-27 Flankers. The Dutch F-35s escorted the formation from a distance and handed over the escort to NATO partners.”

Eight Dutch F-35s are based in Poland for the months of February and March – half for NATO patrols, and half for a training program.

The audio is garbled at times, but the emotions are unmistakable.

“I am being taken to be shot. I lost a lot of people there. Remember this: do not send more people here. It’s enough, they want to kill us all.”

It is the last message Viktor Sevalnev would send. A convict, who had been in jail for armed robbery and assault, he was sent from prison to fight for Russia in Ukraine. After most of his colleagues died in an assault on a factory outside Soledar, it was the act of survival that proved fatal to Sevalnev.

In a last message to his wife, he said he feared officials from the Russian Ministry of Defense would soon take him from his hospital bed, where he recorded the audio message, and execute him. Days later, his body was returned to his wife in Moscow, in a closed coffin.

Sevalnev’s callous fate joins a growing list of complaints of abuse from convicts whom CNN has spoken to. For months, Russia has been using the shadowy private mercenary company Wagner to bolster its frontline presence with prisoners – a scheme at first denied and secretive, but then openly promoted by Wagner’s owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

However, Sevalnev and several prisoners CNN has spoken to seem to indicate a disturbing new strategy. They say they were directly employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Read the full story here. 

The United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that the Ukraine Contact Group will support Ukraine’s “fight for freedom over the long haul,” adding that it would also help advance Ukraine during a “spring counter-offensive.”

“With unity and urgency, we will again deliver the support that we have promised to Ukraine,” Austin said ahead of the Ukraine Defense contact group meeting in Brussels. “We will put capabilities into the hands of trained Ukrainian forces … so they can be integrated together on the battlefield.”

The group, formed in June 2022, consists of more than 40 countries who meet monthly to coordinate shipments of weapons and equipment into Ukraine.

Austin also said it has committed to nearly $50 billion in “lethal assistance” to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion last year.

“The United States, Germany, and the Netherlands are working together to provide Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine,” he said. “France and Italy are working to provide a SAMP/T air-defense system.”

After listing other countries donations to Ukraine, Austin said a year after Russia’s invasion, Putin is “betting that it can wait us out.”

“But one year on, we are as united as ever,” Austin said.

A South Korean court has ruled in favor of reviewing the refugee status applications of two out of the five Russian men who have been stranded at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport since last October after escaping conscription.

The application request of a third man was denied by the court while another two men are still waiting for a decision on their cases. 

They fled Russia after the government’s military mobilization order last September and have been stranded at Seoul’s airport for months after authorities refused to accept them.

Stranded status: Three of the men arrived at the airport last October and two in November, according to their lawyer Lee Jong-chan. But since their applications for refugee status were denied by the South Korean Justice Ministry, they’ve been at the airport’s departure lounge for months waiting for a ruling on their appeal, according to Lee.

In a press release on Tuesday, Lee welcomed the court’s decision and said that he hopes the two Russian men would now be allowed to enter the country as soon as possible. Lee said thought that it was “regrettable” that one person’s application was dismissed without specifying the reason for the decision.

What does these mean for them? Tuesday’s court decision doesn’t mean the two men have been granted refugee status, but rather that their application will now be reviewed by authorities. The South Korean government can still appeal the court’s decision, according to Lee.

It is unclear when the two other men’s cases will be reviewed by the court. 

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday rejected accusations by Moldovan President Maia Sandu that Moscow is plotting to destabilize the country.

In a statement on Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said “such claims are completely unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

Sandu on Monday accused Russia of planning to use “saboteurs” to destabilize the former Soviet republic, echoing a claim made days earlier by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. CNN is unable to independently verify claims made by Sandu.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Tuesday also accused Kyiv of trying to draw Moldova into confrontation with Russia.

Some background: On Thursday, Zelensky said Ukrainian intelligence had intercepted a Russian plan to destabilize Moldova.

The next day, the prime minister of Moldova and her cabinet resigned — just hours after a Russian cruise missile crossed over the country’s territory. The Moldovan Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador over what it said was an “unacceptable violation of our airspace by a Russian missile.”  

A decision on whether to send modern fighter jets to Ukraine is “not the most urgent issue” right now, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. 

The alliance needs to focus instead on delivering the military support it has already committed to Ukraine, Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels before a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

“The urgent need now is to deliver what has always been promised. To deliver the armored vehicles, the infantry fighting vehicles, the German martyrs, the US Bradleys and of course also the main battle tanks, the Leopards and the other battle tanks that have been pledged,” Stoltenberg said. 

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lobbied strongly for allies to send modern fighter jets to Ukraine, officially requesting the Netherlands’ supply of American made F-16 jets on Friday. 

The NATO chief also acknowledged the type of support allies have provided to Ukraine “has changed and evolved” and will continue to do so “as this war develops.” 

Last week, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda appeared to downplay the prospect of any imminent deliveries of aircraft to Ukraine, calling it a “serious” decision that would not be “easy” to take. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said Ukraine must get the weapons it needs to “win this war.”

Speaking to reporters at the NATO’s minister’s meeting in Brussels, Stoltenberg said consultations among alliance members to support Kyiv would continue over the next two days.

“Because we know the need to ensure that Ukraine gets the weapons it needs to be able to retake territory, liberate the lands and win this war and prevail as a sovereign and independent nation,” he said.

It was important to discuss the types of systems and platforms NATO members should send to Ukraine and that all of the systems “work as they should,” he added.

“When it comes to artillery, we need ammunition, we need spare parts, we need maintenance, we need all the logistics to ensure that we are able to sustain these weapon systems,” Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg also reaffirmed comments he made Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “preparing for more war.”

“We see no signs that President Putin is preparing for peace. What we see is the opposite, he’s preparing for more war for new offensives and new attacks,” he said.
“So it makes it just even more important that NATO allies and partners provide more support to Ukraine.”

China’s top diplomat will visit Russia this month, according to its Foreign Ministry, in the first visit to the country from a Chinese official in that role since Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine began last year.

Wang Yi, who was named Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy adviser last month, will visit Russia during an eight-day international tour starting Tuesday that will also include visits to France, Italy, Hungary and a speaking engagement at the Munich Security Conference next weekend, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken may also attend.

The foreign itinerary is Wang’s first after leaving his post as foreign minister and taking up his new role, and it could provide a test of the diplomat’s ability in balancing Beijing’s close ties with Moscow, while also attempting to boost China’s image and relations in Europe – and by extension the United States.

Read more here.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak visited the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade in Świętoszów, Poland, on Monday and met with Polish instructors and Ukrainian soldiers training on Leopard 2 A4 tanks.

Take a look:

Moldova’s President Maia Sandu on Monday accused Russia of planning to use “saboteurs” to destabilize the former Soviet republic, echoing a claim made days earlier by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

In an address on the presidential website, Sandu said the statement by Zelensky “about the plans of the Russian Federation to destabilize the Republic of Moldova have been confirmed by our institutions.”

“Russia’s plan to carry out subversive actions on the territory of our state is not new,” she said. “Attempts to destabilize the situation and undermine the state were also made last autumn, but they did not achieve their goal thanks to the prompt intervention of our security and public order agencies.”

Sandu added that last fall, in anticipation of an energy crisis, there was a plan for “a series of actions involving saboteurs who have undergone military training and are disguised as civilians to carry out violent actions, attacks on government buildings and hostage-taking.”

Sandu also claimed individuals disguised as “the so-called opposition” were going to try forcing a change of power in Chisinau through “violent actions.” 

CNN is unable to independently verify those claims.   

On Thursday, Zelensky said Ukrainian intelligence intercepted a Russian plan to destabilize Moldova.

The next day, the prime minister of Moldova and her cabinet resigned — just hours after a Russian cruise missile crossed over the country’s territory. The Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador over what it said was an “unacceptable violation of our airspace by a Russian missile.”  

CNN has reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment on the allegations by Sandu and Zelensky.

Some context: The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the emergence of a pro-Moscow de facto breakaway state along Moldova’s border with Ukraine known as Transnistria. Unrecognized by the international community, the 1,300-square mile enclave has played host to thousands of Russian troops and its economy is heavily dependent on Russian subsidies.

Concerns about Russia’s long-term plans for Transnistria have only intensified after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last February.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure claims Russia is “sabotaging inspections” of vessels heading to Ukrainian ports to load up agricultural products, noting “the number of new vessels entering for loading continues to decrease” in the ports of Greater Odesa.

“Such decreasing dynamics are due to Russia’s actions in the inspection zone in the Bosphorus. It is now three months in a row that Russians are sabotaging inspections for unsubstantiated and sometimes preposterous reasons,” the ministry said in a statement on social media.

There are 145 vessels in line for inspection by the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) as of Feb. 12, and 122 of those are heading to Ukrainian ports to get agricultural produce, the ministry said.

CNN has reached out to the JCC, ​the UN initiative that oversees the export of Ukrainian grain, for comment.

“It is our hope that the issue of impeded inspections will be resolved by our partners and the entire civilized world,” the ministry statement added. “Ukraine has the right to free trade navigation under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the world has the right to continuous access to food. Russia must stop imposing its discriminatory policies on the world.” 

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Monday called on Turkey and Hungary to quickly ratify Finland and Sweden’s bids to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

“I made it clear over recent months with regard to all NATO members, especially the two who haven’t ratified yet, that it is not only in the spirit of an alliance to ratify swiftly, but also that it will make us stronger as an alliance,“ Baerbock said during a joint news conference with her Finnish counterpart in Helsinki.

The two Nordic countries announced their intention to join NATO in May 2022, ending decades of neutrality after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a sudden shift in attitudes toward joining the bloc. 

All 30 NATO member states must ratify their bids to join the bloc; however, Turkey and Hungary have yet to approve them. 

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said he hopes both Finland and Sweden can become NATO members by the middle of the summer, adding “the conflict is not far away from us.” 

Haavisto said he hoped fulfilling “all those conditions that were set by Turkey” would lead “to a very rapid ratification process.” 

Some context: Turkey-Sweden relations suffered a major blow in late January after a rally outside the Turkish Embassy in Helsinki at which an anti-immigration politician set a copy of the Quran alight. The incident sparked anger in Turkey, where protesters burned the Swedish flag outside the Swedish Embassy in response.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously said he has a positive view on Finland’s entry to NATO, but not on Sweden’s “as long as it permits attacks on Islam’s holy book Quran,” according to state news agency Anadolu. Turkey has also said Sweden must take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.

CNN’s Jack Guy and Niamh Kennedy contributed reporting to this post.

The scenes are chaotic: Russian tanks veering wildly before exploding or driving straight into minefields, men running in every direction, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.

Russian military bloggers are calling it a fiasco, and worse.

These scenes have been recorded by Ukrainian military drones over the past two weeks around the town of Vuhledar in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, where successive Russian assaults have failed.

The Vuhledar debacle suggests chronic failures in the command and tactics of the Russians as they gear up for a spring offensive. If replicated elsewhere on the long military front in Donetsk and Luhansk, such failings could jeopardize the Kremlin’s plans to seize more territory.

About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that’s open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

One video shows a tank running into a minefield and exploding, followed almost obliviously by an infantry fighting vehicle that suffers the same fate. Others show Ukrainian drones dropping small explosive charges on static tanks in open country — and a graveyard of abandoned armor.

Read more here.