February 7, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Ukraine’s top national security official told CNN that he is confident Ukraine will eventually receive American-made F-16 fighter jets.

The F-16, first developed in the 1970s, is a highly maneuverable fighter jet, capable of carrying six air-to-air or air-to-surface missiles under its wings.

F-16s would give Ukraine the capability, should it overcome air defenses, to strike Russia with an American-made weapon far behind the frontlines, even outside of territory considered internationally to be Ukrainian.

There have been pledges from the West for main battle tanks to Ukraine in recent days, which has led to renewed calls from Kyiv for fighter jets. Publicly, however, Western leaders have eschewed discussion of fighter jets going to Ukraine.

In an interview with CNN last month, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov: “I sent a wish list card to Santa Claus last year, and fighter jets also [were] including in this wish list.”

In the distance there are gunshots, a heavy blanket of snow muffling the sound, confusing the senses — how far away and which direction, impossible to know.

Inside their German-made Leopard 2 tanks, Danish soldiers wait to pounce on their prey, an “enemy” force hiding in a warren of trenches deep in the freezing Estonian forest.

Before they leap into action in this NATO military exercise, just 100 miles from the Russian border, French and Estonian infantry open up a ferocious fusillade of fake gunfire, duking it out for control of the trenches in almost hand-to-hand fighting.

Troops fall to the ground amid thunderous simulated artillery explosions, as exercise officials bellow who is dead, who is injured.

The annual NATO winter military exercise is intended to gel the multinational soldiers — this year comprising Estonian, French, British, Danish and US troops — into a singular fighting force able to take enemy territory even in the bone-chilling cold.

Amid the trees, the message for Russian President Vladimir Putin is clear: NATO’s high-tech forces are ready for action. There are lessons here for the Ukrainians, too, whose training on Leopard 2 tanks began Monday in Germany.

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Traditional Ukrainian tapestries, family photos and pastoral scenes on cheap posters cover the walls of her cottage warmed by a wood-burning stove. The only record of her tragic past are her birth certificate and her memories.

In her 102 years, Liubov Yarosh has survived three famines, including the 1932-33 “Holodomor” when — under Joseph Stalin’s orders — Ukraine’s farmers were stripped of every grain they produced, to feed Moscow’s industrialization and suppress Ukrainian nationalist resistance.

At 13 she saw her older brother and sister perish in what was Ukraine’s worst mass starvation. “I was completely swollen. My legs were swollen, my arms were swollen. I was so sick. I thought I was going to die,” she says of her own suffering.

Back then the Kremlin sought to rid Ukraine of independent farmers, of its language, its history, its artists and its independence.

Many believe what Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to do now has startling similarities.

Read the full story here.

Ukraine expects Russia to mobilize up to half a million additional soldiers in the coming months, according to a senior intelligence official.

Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of Ukrainian Defense Intelligence, asserted in an interview that "Russia is going to mobilize 300,000 to 500,000 people in order to carry out offensive operations in the south and east of Ukraine in spring and summer of 2023."

Russian officials have consistently denied that another mobilization is planned. But at a conference in December of Russia's military chiefs, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed strengthneing the armed forces by up to 1.5 million combat personnel from the current 1.15 million over a period of three years.

This was required "to guarantee the solving of problems related to Russia's military security", Shoigu said.

Skibytskyi also said that at the beginning of 2022, Defense Intelligence was aware that a "full-scale invasion was to begin in early February or a bit later ... In January we saw troops from Russia's Eastern Military District begin arriving in Belarus," as well as preparations in Crimea, he said.

United Nations head António Guterres on Monday struck a somber tone as he warned leaders convened in New York at the organization’s General Assembly that the world is knowingly marching into a “wider war." 

A drone exploded early Monday in the Russian city of Kaluga, Vladislav Shapsha, the governor of the region, said in a post on his official Telegram channel.

The governor didn't provide any additional details about the drone or its suspected origin. 

The city of Kaluga is about 200 kilometers (or about 124 miles) southwest of Moscow.

"There was no damage to civilian and social facilities. There were no casualties. Representatives of law enforcement agencies are working on the ground," he said. 

The landscape around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut provides natural defenses that make it an “unwinnable fortress,” the commander of Ukraine’s land forces said on Monday.

“This particular terrain has topographic features. The city is surrounded by dominating heights and hills which itself is an entanglement for the enemy,” Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said via Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday “no one will surrender Bakhmut – we will fight as long as we can.”

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner private military company, said on Sunday that the battle in Bakhmut is ongoing with no signs of Ukraine’s armed forces retreating: “AFU fight to the last,” he said on Telegram, referring to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

More on Bakhmut: CNN reported in January that US and Western officials were urging Ukraine to shift its focus from the brutal, months-long fight in Bakhmut and prioritize instead a potential offensive in the south, using a different style of fighting that takes advantage of the billions of dollars in new military hardware recently committed by Western allies.

CNN's Katharina Krebs and Uliana Pavlova contributed to this post.

Europe’s ban on Russia’s diesel arrived painlessly on Sunday.

Although the EU cut off its biggest supplier, diesel futures prices in the bloc fell 1.6% on Monday, amounting to a 20% loss over the past two weeks as demand in the region has waned, and efforts by countries to stockpile ahead of the ban have started to pay off.

The price drop will be met with relief by millions of the continent’s truckers, drivers and businesses that rely on diesel. About 96% of trucks, 91% of vans and 42% of passenger cars in the European Union run on the fuel, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

The diesel ban comes two months after the bloc placed an embargo on seaborne crude oil imports from Russia, as part of a package of sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia accounted for 29% of the region’s total diesel imports last year, data from Rystad Energy shows.

Countries have prepared for the latest ban by ramping up imports of Moscow’s diesel in recent months. Europe’s imports were up nearly 19% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with the same period the previous year, according to energy data provider Vortexa.

Read the full story here.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov is not expected to be replaced this week, according to the leader of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s parliamentary faction.

David Arakhamia appears to be tempering remarks he made on Sunday, when he announced that Reznikov would be moved to the Ministry of Strategic Industries, and that the current head of defense intelligence, Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, would head up the Ministry of Defense.

On Sunday, Reznikov told Ukrainian news outlet Fakty ICTV that the idea that he was being moved between ministries was “news to me,” but that he served at the pleasure of the president.

Rumors about Reznikov’s position have amplified in recent weeks, as probes into procurement decisions at the Defense Ministry continue.