February 15, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

The delivery of British fighter jets for Ukraine is likely to be years away, the UK defence secretary said Wednesday, reiterating that its decision to train Ukrainian pilots is aimed at “long-term resilience,” rather than the current Russian invasion.

“When it comes to fighter jets, I don’t think it’s going to be in the next few months, or even years, that we are going to necessarily hand over fighter jets,” Ben Wallace told BBC television.

“You just can’t learn to fly in a week or two. It will take a long time. But also they come with effectively a pit crew, like a Formula One team. You come with hundreds of engineers and pilots. And that’s not something you can just generate in a few months. And we’re not going to deploy two hundred RAF personnel into Ukraine in the time of a war.”

The UK government said last week during a visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky that it will begin training Ukrainian pilots on NATO-standard fighter jets. “The training will ensure pilots are able to fly sophisticated NATO-standard fighter jets in the future,” a statement from Downing Street read.

Wallace said that the British decision to begin training Ukrainian pilots was about the long-term.

“We have to plan not only for the fight at the moment, where we help Ukraine through seeing off Russia’s illegal invasion, but we have to help Ukraine with its long-term resilience, in making sure that after this conflict, or this war, Ukraine is able to defend itself for the long run.”

Some background: Zelensky lobbied strongly last week for allies to send modern fighter jets to Ukraine. On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said a decision by NATO allies on whether to send fighter jets to Ukraine is "not the most urgent issue" right now.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels before a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Stoltenberg said: "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."

Russia’s Embassy in Washington has dismissed a US report that alleges Moscow is operating a network of camps holding thousands of Ukrainian children as "absurd."

The embassy also accused the United States of being complicit in the alleged deaths of children in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.

What's in the report: It says more than 6,000 children 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.”

The report was produced as a part of the work of the US State Department-backed Conflict Observatory by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab 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.

“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.

The findings could provide evidence that Russia’s actions amount to genocide, according to the report.

Western intelligence shows that Russia is amassing aircraft near its border with Ukraine in an apparent attempt to bolster its faltering land offensive with jets and helicopters, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing two officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence shared among NATO members showed that Russia has been accumulating fixed-wing and rotary aircraft close to its border with Ukraine, the two officials reportedly told the Financial Times.

"We don't currently see that": In a news conference following the meeting with NATO defense ministers on Tuesday, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said they did not see an immediate threat but underscored the potential danger of Russian air forces.

A senior administration reportedly told the Financial Times that Russia would likely turn to an air offensive now as its land forces are depleted.

“The Russian land forces are pretty depleted so it’s the best indication that they will turn this into an air fight. If the Ukrainians are going to survive . . . they need to have as many air defense capabilities and as much ammunition . . . as possible,” the official told the Financial Times.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that allies in the alliance, 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." 

An unlikely group is fighting to defend Ukraine 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."

Addario, who recently returned from a trip documenting the Ukrainian front lines, 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.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions remains extremely difficult but Russia's prolonged involvement in the battles there reduces its capacity to fight elsewhere in Ukraine.

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.

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 said.

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.

The report found that 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.

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

Read more here.

Vadym Khodak beams and leans forward. He’s almost bouncing on his feet.

His smile speaks volumes, revealing deep furrows that a year of front line fighting have etched on his face. “I’m 57,” he says. “I’m a former tank driver and I volunteered to fight the day Russia invaded.”

That was almost a year ago.

Now he’s an army major and leading Ukraine’s new tank training in western Poland. His troops are the first to get their hands on the new Leopard 2 tanks that NATO allies spent months debating before finally agreeing in January to give Ukraine.

So far, Khodak’s crews are learning shooting skills on simulators and combat driving. Plunging through plumes of smoke, the 60-ton tanks plough through the soft forest dirt at Poland’s main tank range, in Swietoszow, near the German border.

Tucked away in a nearby airy modern hangar are simulators where the 21 crews on the training mission can learn how to use the machines’ highly effective sighting, target seeking and killer gun capabilities. Kyiv’s hope is that the weapons will deliver a punch to Russian forces and take back lost territory.

Read more 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. 

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."

Some context: 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. 

CNN's Olga Voitovych, Sophie Tanno, and Gabriel Kinder contributed reporting.

In the 12 months since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine, one of the biggest surprises has been the willingness with which Western countries, especially in Europe, have handed over increasingly sophisticated military equipment for Ukrainian use.

At times the debates around sending certain types of weapons, most notably tanks, have been testy and caused high-level diplomatic spats. But given the scale of the challenge and how long it’s dragged on, the generosity of European leaders — often cast as cynical and self-interested — and their publics has been a surprise to some observers.

It’s all the more surprising for the fact that the donating of this military equipment — and crucially, ammunition — has left the stock cupboards of European militaries 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.

However, since the start of the war, European nations have donated a wide range of weapons, from antitank missiles to artillery rounds and tank shells.

Read more here.