February 18, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

The US is beginning to see “disturbing” trends in China’s support for Russia’s military, US officials familiar with the intelligence tell CNN.

The officials said there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Russia without getting caught.

The officials would not describe in detail what intelligence the US has seen to suggest a recent shift in China’s posture, but they've been concerned enough that they have been sharing the intelligence with allies and partners at the Munich Security Conference over the last several days, the officials said.  

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will raise the issue if he meets with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Saturday on the sidelines of the conference, officials said, though such a meeting is not yet confirmed.

Vice President Kamala Harris also alluded to China’s support for Russia during her speech in Munich. 

Officials said the US is seeing China try to publicly present itself as a proponent of peace and maintain relationships with Europe, while at the same time quietly aiding Russia’s war effort and considering the provision of lethal aid.

Speaking at the conference Saturday, Yi said Beijing is prepared to present a peace proposition for Ukraine. Many European Union leaders in Munich share the US' wariness of Beijing’s intentions.

More background: The Biden administration last month raised concerns with China about evidence suggesting Chinese companies have sold non-lethal equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine, according to two US officials. 

That equipment has included items like flak jackets and helmets, multiple sources familiar with US and European intelligence told CNN.

China has stopped short of more robust military assistance, however, including lethal weapons systems for use on the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia has requested such aid, but China has not wanted to be seen as a pariah on the world stage, officials said.

But there are signs now that Beijing could be considering it, the officials said, and the Biden administration is warning publicly and privately that the US is monitoring closely for any violations of Western sanctions prohibiting military support for Russia. 

China and Russia publicly declared a “friendship without limits” just before Russia invaded Ukraine last year, and Wang Yi is set to visit Russia this month, CNN has reported.

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin warned Saturday that Russia's attack on Ukraine has emboldened North Korea.

Park said North Korea has "resumed ballistic missile testing, probably an ICBM, after a break lasting almost 50 days, clearly signaling its intent to conduct additional provocations."

The US government also said North Korea had test-launched a presumed long-range ballistic missile Saturday, calling it “a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions."

On Friday, North Korea had warned of “continuous and unprecedented strong responses” if the US and South Korea go ahead with planned military exercises, according to a statement by North Korea’s foreign ministry.

CNN’s Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report from Seoul.

Gen. David Petraeus told CNN he believes Ukrainian troops will be able to push Russian forces further back this summer, contingent on arms supply and strategy.

It will take successful combined arms warfare — a complementary approach where multiple kinds of fighting units support one another — to succeed, Petraeus told CNN's Nic Robertson at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

"If you cut that, you can start the isolation of Crimea, you can reduce it as a logistical support hub, and then you can divide the Russian forces. And then if you can take down the Kerch Strait bridge, you've really isolated them," he added.

Petraeus said if that scenario plays out, combined with long-range weapons for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), there'd be a "very different dynamic" in the conflict.

If Russian losses continue to pile up, "at some point, the Kremlin has to recognize this war is unsustainable on the battlefield. And if you continue to tighten the economic, financial and export controls, you make it unsustainable (on) the homefront as well," he said.

He also said Ukrainians being trained on Western weapons seem to be doing so at remarkable speed.

Ukrainian troops are receiving training on Leopard 2 tanks in Poland, the UK government said earlier this month that it will begin training Ukrainian pilots on NATO-standard fighter jets, and the first group of Ukrainians completed training at a US base in Germany on Friday.

"I think they will be able to achieve the kind of combined arms effects that the Russians have not achieved," Petraeus reiterated.

CNN's Cristiana Moisescu contributed to this report.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that his government has a “profound stake” in a “just and durable” peace in Ukraine. 

“Any peace has to be consistent with the principles of the United Nations Charter," Blinken said during a discussion panel at the Munich Security Conference.

And, the top US diplomat said, it's in the best interest of countries around the world to make sure the outcome doesn't somehow validate Russia's move to seize territory by force.

Joined in a debate panel by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Blinken went on to assert that a durable peace means Ukraine will have the tools to stop aggression before it escalates in the future. 

“We have to do everything in our power to make sure that Russia won't simply repeat the exercise a year, five years later,” Blinken said. 

Later during the discussion, the US Secretary of State reiterated his country’s commitment to helping Ukraine during the war against Russia, noting "the unprecedented assistance" that's been provided and "an enduring commitment" to help Ukraine's defense long term.

Blinken added that the US has "no doubt at all about Ukraine's victory and success."

"And there's a simple, powerful reason for that — irrespective of anything else, including the support that we're providing," he said. "The biggest single difference is that Ukrainians are fighting for their own country, for their future, for their land. The Russians are not, and that will be the biggest thing." 

CIA Director Bill Burns said intelligence sharing with NATO allies has been critical to holding together a coalition in support of Ukraine over the past year.

“I think the intelligence sharing that we engage in — and it's a two-way street; we've learned a lot from our NATO partners, we learn a lot from the Ukrainians as well — I think has been the kind of essential cement in the coalition that (US President Joe Biden) has organized,” Burns said during a panel at a Saturday session of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

The US puts a premium on sharing with its partners "in a very quick and systematic way,” Burns added. 

Republican Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, also offered praise for Burns and the intelligence community for ensuring intel on Russia is up to date.

“I just want to give ... Director Burns credit for the fact that we had sort of taken our eye off the ball with respect to Russia, we had sort of moved on, and we didn't have as much resources directed toward Russia as the Ukraine issue was unfolding,” Turner said. “And Director Burns, along with the Department of Defense and the director of National Intelligence had to really pull together, including our allies, new information and new critical analytical scrutiny of what we could find."

The eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Kharkiv faced more attacks from Russian forces Saturday, as newly drafted Russian soldiers appear to be replacing Wagner fighters, local military leaders said.

“The number of the Wagners has significantly decreased nowadays compared to what we saw a few months ago. Most likely they were killed in the Bakhmut and Soledar sectors,” Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk region military administration, wrote on Telegram.

Hayday added that the eastern city of Kreminna is one of the areas seeing the most fighting, saying that "the overall situation is difficult but fully controlled. The number of attacks and shelling of our positions has indeed increased."

Russian forces are jamming Ukrainian drone signals while also deploying suicide squads to detect Ukrainian forces’ positions, according to Hayday.

In Kharkiv: Towns in the Kharkiv region, northwest of Luhansk, were also shelled by Russian forces on Saturday, killing one civilian and injuring two, according to Oleh Synehubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US Vice President Kamala Harris concurred during their meeting at the Munich Security Conference the war in Ukraine is global in scale.

“They agreed that Putin’s war in Ukraine is a global war, both in terms of its impact on food and energy security and in terms of its implications for internationally accepted norms like sovereignty. The prime minister and Vice President Harris condemned those countries who have supported Putin’s efforts politically and militarily," according to a Downing Street spokesperson.

Downing Street added that the two also discussed how to increase international action on Ukraine to secure peace for the future.

"They agreed on the importance of thinking beyond Ukraine’s immediate needs to how the international community can ensure Ukraine never faces the same threats again," the spokesperson said.

Moscow is displeased that Moldova appears to be moving closer to the European Union, Russian state media reports, amid growing US concerns that Russia could attempt to destabilize the small eastern European country.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Saturday that Moscow remains open to "constructive and pragmatic" dialogue with the Moldovan government in Chișinău, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

“Unfortunately, Chișinău's course toward Russia is unlikely to change," she continued. 

Moldova’s parliament this week approved a pro-Western government.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has accused Russia of plotting to destabilize the country, which Russia’s foreign ministry has dismissed as “completely unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced "deep concern" this week about the prospect of further Russian meddling with Moldova.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola also expressed the body's "unwavering solidarity" with Moldova in an open letter on Tuesday. "The place of the Republic of Moldova is with us, in the European family," he said.

Why Moldova is important: The small country, situated between Ukraine and Romania, was part of the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a handful of “frozen conflict” zones in eastern Europe emerged, including a sliver of land along Moldova’s border with Ukraine known as Transnistria.

The territory declared itself a Soviet republic in 1990, opposing any attempt by Moldova to become an independent state or to merge with Romania. When Moldova became independent the following year, Russia quickly inserted a so-called “peacekeeping force” in Transnistria, sending troops to back pro-Moscow separatists there.

This supposed “peacekeeping” presence has mirrored Moscow’s pretext for invasions in Georgia and Ukraine.

Alarm bells in Moldova and the West grew louder when the Kremlin began to claim the rights of ethnic Russians are being violated in Transnistria – another argument used by Putin to justify his February 2022 invasion of Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine, which contained two breakaway Russian-backed statelets.

In the context of the war today, the Russian-backed separatist enclave at the southwestern edge of Moldova could now present a bookend to any westward Russian assault from eastern Ukraine.

CNN's Elise Hammond and Michael Conte contributed to this report.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said allies need to “double down” on military support for Ukraine in order for Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals in Ukraine to fail.  

The EU chief appealed to allies to work together and speed up production of items that Ukraine has said it needs, such as ammunition.

"It cannot be that we have to wait months and years til we are able to replenish, until we are able to deliver that to Ukraine," von der Leyen said.

The European Commission president suggested using production approaches similar to those seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, when governments worked with pharmaceutical companies to scale up supply.

“We could think of, for example, advanced purchase agreements that gives the defense industry the possibility to invest in production lines now to be faster and to increase the amount they can deliver,” von der Leyen said.