April 21, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

The US will begin training Ukrainian forces on how to operate Abrams tanks next month as it seeks to get them onto the battlefield against Russia before the end of the summer.

US M1A1 Abrams tanks will be sent by mid-May to Grafenwoehr, Germany, where roughly 250 Ukrainians will undergo a 10-week training course with US troops, a US official told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. 

The tanks are a long-awaited capability for Ukraine, which has been battling Russia for more than a year. In total, the US is providing 31 tanks, the size of one Ukrainian tank battalion. 

Though the US had originally said it would send the newer M1A2 versions of the tanks, officials said in March that the Ukrainians would instead get the M1A1, dramatically accelerating the timeline for delivering the tanks.  

In addition to tanks being provided by the US, Ukraine will also be receiving German Leopard 2 tanks and British Challengers. The armored capability is likely to make a difference on the battlefield for embattled Ukrainian troops, but the impact won’t be immediate due to the timeline for training — not to mention the significant logistical demands to keep the tanks up and running.

Training status: Roughly 8,800 Ukrainian troops have already finished combined arms training in Germany and returned to Ukraine, Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for US Army Europe and Africa, said in a statement Friday. Currently, there are approximately 2,250 Ukrainian conducting combined arms training in Germany. 

Austin met with allied officials again on Friday as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Ramstein, Germany. The group has provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, Austin said. 

Tanks repair hub: Germany, Poland and Ukraine also signed an agreement Friday to set up a hub in Poland to repair the Leopard 2 battle tanks, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters.

Pistorius said that all parties agreed on how to finance it and said that operating the hub could start at the end of May.  

CNN's Nadine Schmidt in Berlin contributed reporting to this post.

Ukraine has received a "green light" for close cooperation with NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Friday.

“I’m happy to have a green light for our close cooperation with NSPA, NATO’s procurement agency. This will include the National Procurement Review and best-in-the-league advice to [Ukraine’s Defense Ministry],” Reznikov tweeted following a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

The meeting in Ramstein on Friday brings together Ukrainian officials and their counterparts from the coalition known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

“We need excellent defense procurement both to win the war and to be efficient in the future," he said.

Reznikov's comments come on the heels of Stoltenberg's remarks, reaffirming that Ukraine will eventually "become a NATO member."

One week after the European Union approved a fund of approximately $1.1 billion to reimburse states that have sent ammunition to Ukraine, Ukraine’s foreign minister has asked the EU to expedite a second tranche of aid.

In a tweet Friday, Dmytro Kuleba said that during a call with the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, he thanked him "for all the EU’s defence assistance, including the latest €1 billion for immediate ammo needs."

Kuleba said he called on Borrell "to help finalise discussions on the 2nd €1 billion ($1.12 billion) joint procurement tranche as soon as possible to ensure security in Europe."

In turn, Borrell said in a tweet Friday that "the urgency is clear" and that the EU is looking to deliver ammunition quickly.

Remember: The EU's decision earlier this month implemented the first part of an agreement made by its members on March 20 to speed up the delivery and joint procurement of artillery ammunition, which Ukraine is burning through rapidly in its defense against Russia’s invasion.  

The measure covers existing stocks "or from the reprioritisation of existing orders" in the period from February 9 to May 31, 2023, the EU said.

CNN’s Sarah Dean contributed reporting to this post.

A dancer with Odesa Opera has been killed while fighting on the front line, the ballet company has said.

Rostyslav Yanchyshen, 31, was killed “while performing a combat mission,” the company, based in Ukraine's southern port city, said on its Facebook page.

“For more than ten years, Rostyslav served at the Odesa Opera, and in the first days of the war he joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine to heroically defend Ukraine, which he loved above all else! As a result, the artist's ballet flats were replaced by army boots, and the music of his favorite performances was replaced by the sounds of mortar fire,” the opera said.

The opera said that one of Yanchyshen's most striking roles was that of a soldier dying, in the ballet "Trymai" ("Hold").

Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture paid tribute to Yanchyshen, calling his death an "unspeakable loss" in a Facebook post.

Vadym Krusser, also a ballet dancer and Yanchyshen’s friend, told CNN that “he was a very positive person. There were no bad situations for him, he always looked for the positive in everything. It was his personal decision to go to the front.”

"Last time I talked to him was a few months ago. He was as positive as ever.”

Krusser added, “We had a minute of silence before we started work and many colleagues just couldn't hold back the tears.” 

Russian investigators have asked the Lefortovo Court of Moscow to arrest the Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev in absentia, alleging the “illegal crossing of the border of the Russian Federation,” according to official news agency TASS, citing court officials.

Last year, Russia's interior ministry put Grozev on Russia’s wanted list.

Grozev, who is Bulgarian, was the key figure in investigating Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent by FSB operatives in 2020. His investigation for Bellingcat exposed the identities of an FSB group that poisoned Navalny in August 2020.

The journalist has also reported extensively on Russia’s involvement in a number of high-profile international crimes, including the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine and the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the United Kingdom. Moscow has repeatedly denied any responsibility for either attack.

The UK government has sanctioned a Russian judge and two other individuals it says are connected to the arrest of jailed Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza.

“The UK is sanctioning Elena Lenskaya – a judge who approved Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest, along with Denis Kolesnikov and Andrei Zadachin – investigators involved in the arrest of Mr Kara-Murza,” it said in a statement Friday.

The sanctions involve asset freezes and a travel ban.

“Russia’s treatment and conviction of Vladimir Kara-Murza once again demonstrates its utter contempt for basic human rights,” UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in the statement.

“The UK will continue to support Mr Kara-Murza and his family. I call on Russia to release him immediately and unconditionally,” Cleverly added.

Key context: On Monday, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of high treason and other charges.

It came after he publicly condemned Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Kara-Murza was initially detained one year ago, hours after an interview with CNN in which he criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “regime of murderers.”

Ukrainian officials and allies met Friday in Ramstein, Germany, as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. During the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed that Ukraine will join the military alliance. All NATO allies have agreed the country should be a member, he added.

On Thursday, the secretary general was in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He said the two discussed NATO's strong support for Ukraine and that Zelensky had accepted his invitation to attend the NATO summit in Lithuania in July.

Here's the latest developments:

As the Russian offensive in the east continues, Moscow's forces in the south – in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions – are on the defensive, according to Ukraine’s deputy defense minister.

“The east remains the epicenter. There, the enemy continues offensive actions in four directions simultaneously - Marinka, Avdiivka, Lyman, Bakhmut," Hanna Maliar posted on Telegram.

"Thanks to our defenders, the enemy is not able to advance in most of them.”

Maliar said that the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut remained the hottest spot.

Elsewhere, she said, “the enemy tried to move in two more directions this week – Kupiansk [to the north in Kharkiv region] and Shakhtarsk [to the east]."

“But our soldiers repelled the attacks and the enemy did not advance.”

Maliar said that some settlements in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv regions continue to be shelled. These northern regions border Russia and have frequently come under artillery and mortar fire.

The defense lawyer of the jailed Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza has said he fled Russia before the verdict amid threats of prosecution.

Critic sentenced: Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian human rights advocate and Kremlin critic, was sentenced on Monday to 25 years in prison after publicly condemning Moscow’s war in Ukraine, in a decision that was condemned as politically motivated and draconian by the international community. He was sentenced on charges of high treason and other charges.

Threats of prosecution: Lawyer Vadim Prokhorov told Voice of America Tuesday: “I left Russia a few days before the verdict and the sentence were announced, and currently I am not in Russia."

He said that he had received several threats of prosecution from the Russian authorities.

“Both the prosecutor and the judge found different reasons to say that not only should I be disbarred, but that the question of my own criminal prosecution should also be considered,” he said.

“I also got a warning from one particular politician who said one of the Prosecutor General’s deputies overseeing our case might be interested in the new one,” Prokhorov added.

Prokhorov has defended several prominent Russian dissidents and activists in court, including Ilya Yashin and the family of Boris Nemtsov after his murder.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the date of the Prokhorov's interview with Voice of America. It was Tuesday not Thursday.