February 14, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

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

New York Times photojournalist Lynsey Addario speaks with CNN's Erin Burnett on Tuesday, February 14, 2023.

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.”

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.

Alex Potter speaks with CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday, February 14, 2023.

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.

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.

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

“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.

A Ukrainian serviceman poses at a checkpoint at sunset in the Donetsk region on February 9.

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 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.” 

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

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.”

In this November 2022 photo, Moldovan President Maia Sandu gives a speech in Paris.

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.

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.”

A view of the courtyard of Kherson regional children's home in Kherson, southern Ukraine in November 2022.

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.

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.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal attends a joint briefing with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv.

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.”

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.

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 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. 

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. 

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 speaks to the press as he arrives for a two-day meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on February 14.

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.”

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. 

Damaged buildings are seen after Russian shelling as the strikes continue on the Donbass frontline during Russia and Ukraine war in Bakhmut on February 10.

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. 

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

This handout photo from the Presidential Office of Ukraine shows President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Mélanie Joly.

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.”

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.

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.

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 Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a press conference after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group during a two-day meeting of the alliance's Defence Ministers at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels on February 14.

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.

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.

In this December 2022 photo, a Ukrainian artillery brigade operates a US-made Howitzer M777 cannon in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut.

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.