February 17, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

US Vice President Kamala Harris is set to join world leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where the war in Ukraine will be at the top of the agenda.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron will be among those speaking Friday, the first day of the three-day summit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will also appear by videolink.

The conference comes just ahead of the one-year anniversary of of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell are among other top officials in attendance.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet on Friday morning: "It has now been almost one year since Russia brought an imperialistic war to our continent. At the @MunSecConf, let us renew our commitment to a global order governed by the rule of law – not the right of might."

Russian government officials were not invited to this year’s annual MSC.

Three people were killed and seven were injured by Russian shelling in Ukraine's Kherson region on Thursday, the Kherson region military administration said in a statement Friday.

Russian forces attacked Kherson region 76 times over the last 24 hours, the regional military administration said. "They fired from MLRS, mortars, artillery, tanks and UAVs," it added.

"The Russian army attacked Kherson city 9 times -- residential areas of the city once again came under enemy fire," the regional military administration said. 

"The occupiers hit the commercial port and residential buildings," the regional military administration added.

Some background: The regional capital of Kherson was captured last March in the early stages of Russia’s invasion, and many of its 290,000 citizens left then. In November, Ukrainian forces swept into the key city as Russian troops retreated to the east, delivering a major victory to Kyiv. Since then, Kherson has been the scene of Russian shelling, and many residents have fled, on the advice of Ukraine's administration.

A Ukrainian drone was shot down Friday morning near a power station in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, according to a local Russia-backed official.

Gov. Mikhail Razvozhaev said in a Telegram post that air defenses shot the drone down near the Balaklava thermal power plant and there was no damage to the facility.

It comes after two Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight into Thursday near Sevastopol and "several more" unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down over the waters around the Crimean Peninsula, according to Razvozhaev.

CNN cannot independently confirm Razvozhaev’s claim.

Some context: Sevastopol, along with the rest of Crimea, is internationally recognized as being part of Ukraine. It is the largest city in the peninsula and has been an important port and a major naval base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to “liberate” all of the country’s territory including Crimea, which has been under Russian occupation since 2014.

Inside a sprawling factory just off the President Biden Expressway in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, the future arsenal of Ukraine’s war effort is being forged, one red hot artillery shell at a time.

Running full-tilt, as it was on a recent January morning, the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant churns out roughly 11,000 artillery shells a month. That may seem like a lot, but the Ukrainian military often fires that many shells over just a few days.

To meet that demand, the Scranton plant is undergoing a massive expansion, fueled by millions of dollars in new defense spending from the Pentagon. It’s investing in new high-tech machinery, hiring a few dozen additional workers and will eventually shift to a 24/7 schedule of constant production.

“It’s certainly ramped up over the last year. As we bring in more modern equipment, it’ll be able to ramp up even further,” said Todd Smith, senior director of General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, which operates the plant for the Army.

The US and its allies have already sent nearly $50 billion in aid and equipment to Ukraine’s military over the past year. To keep that up, and to rebuild its own stockpiles, the Pentagon is racing to re-arm, embarking on the biggest increase in ammunition production in decades, and putting portions of the US defense industry on a war-footing despite America technically not being at war.

Read the full story:

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The energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine could push 141 million people worldwide into extreme poverty, according to a report published Thursday in the journal Nature Energy.

Researchers from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, China and the United States modeled the impacts of increased energy prices in 116 countries and found household spending increased up to 4.8% on average, as coal and natural gas prices surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding to post-pandemic increases.

In low-income countries, the report said poorer households already facing severe food shortages were at greater risk of poverty due to higher energy costs. Households in higher income countries also felt the impact of rising energy prices but were more likely to be able to absorb them into household budgets, the report said.

Read the full story here.

Russian strikes around the fiercely embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut left three men and two women dead Thursday, according to a regional official, and nine other civilians also sustained various wounds from shrapnel.

The five civilians killed varied in age between 32 and 66, according to a statement published online by the Donetsk region prosecutor's office.

The statement said the shelling also damaged many residential buildings.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk appealed to the civilians who remain in Bakhmut to leave the city immediately.

"Those who choose to stay in Bakhmut are endangering themselves and loved ones," creating additional risks for the military and police, and "preventing our defense and security forces from working properly in the city," she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not agree to give up any Ukrainian territory in a potential future peace deal with Russia, he said in an interview with BBC News, warning it could lead Russia to "keep coming back."

Zelensky also said a spring offensive, warned of by Kyiv officials, had already begun.

He also responded to comments made at a Thursday news conference by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in which Lukashenko insisted he would not send troops into Ukraine unless Belarus itself is attacked.

"I hope [Belarus] won't join [the war]," Zelensky told BBC News. "If it does, we will fight and we will survive."

Zelensky added it would be a "huge mistake" to allow Russia to use Belarus as a staging area for an attack.

European leaders must “seriously consider” providing Kyiv with fighter jets, lawmakers in the European Union parliament said in a resolution adopted Thursday.

The resolution marked nearly one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

“Ukraine must not only be able to defend itself, but also to regain full control of its entire internationally recognised territory," it added.

The resolution, which is non-binding, also calls on the EU to implement a 10th package of sanctions against Moscow by the end of February and to tighten those already in place. Assets seized from Russian oligarchs should be used to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction, lawmakers said. 

The legislators also urged the European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — and national governments to begin talks with Kyiv this year on Ukraine's bid for EU membership.

Russian response: The Russian Mission to the EU slammed the parliament’s resolution as a “paragon of disinformation” unsupported by “data, facts or evidence,” in a statement posted on its website.

"Obviously, the resolution is aimed at deliberately misleading the European public and trying to justify the European Union's course to escalate the Ukrainian conflict and increase sanctions pressure on our country," the mission said.

Moscow has faced constant diplomatic pressure from the EU, including economic sanctions, since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine.

More background: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took his plea for the supply of Western fighter jets directly to European countries last week, including in a surprise visit to London and at a European Union summit.

Ukrainian pilots will start training on NATO jets in the United Kingdom soon, but it's unclear how soon allies could make a decision on whether to send the modern fighting planes.

NATO's secretary general said Tuesday that the question of sending modern fighter jets to Ukraine is "not the most urgent issue" right now, focusing instead on delivering the military support it has already committed to Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities said on Thursday that Russia attacked infrastructure facilities in the Lviv and Kirovohrad regions.

Three missiles hit a critical infrastructure facility in the Drohobych district of the western Lviv region, according to the head of the district's military administration Stepan Kulyniak.

There were no injuries, but "a number of buildings were destroyed and damaged," Kulyniak said in a social media post. He did not specify what type of infrastructure facility was hit. 

Meanwhile, in the Kirovhohrad region, authorities said an early morning missile attack hit "reservoirs with petroleum products," causing a fire that was later extinguished.