© Reuters. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, Icelandic Foreign Minister Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meet for discuss how to help Ukraine defend itself.
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(Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine at some point, but Kiev needed more immediate military firepower as Ukrainian authorities said a new Russian offensive was underway. .
DIPLOMACY
* “Europe will be with us until our victory. I heard it from several European leaders… about the readiness to provide us with the necessary weapons and support, including the plane,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told a news conference. in Brussels, where he attended a European Union summit. He did not name the countries.
* While Zelenskiy said “you cannot imagine a free Europe without a free Ukraine,” he heard from European Council chief Charles Michel that Ukraine’s road to EU membership would be long and difficult.
* Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said NATO must act together on planes for Ukraine.
* Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would be the Ukrainians who would suffer if Britain or other Western countries supply fighter jets to Kiev, and that the line between direct and indirect Western involvement in the war is blurring.
* Moscow does not believe Kiev’s promises that it will not use long-range Western weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, Alexei Polishyuk, head of department at Russia’s Foreign Ministry, told the state-run RIA news agency.
NORD STREAM PIPES
* The Russian Foreign Ministry said European countries were trying to hide the results of their investigations into last year’s explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines, accusing them of covering up who was at fault.
STRUGGLE
* kyiv says it expects Moscow to expand its offensive with a big push as the February 24 anniversary of the invasion approaches.
* Russian forces launched a series of attacks overnight that knocked out power in parts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, local officials said. There was no information on casualties.
* Russia said it had destroyed four Ukrainian artillery depots in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military said that for the past 24 hours Russian troops had been carrying out offensives in the Kupyansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Novopavlivka and Vuhledar regions.
* Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of the mostly Russian-occupied eastern Luhansk province, described a major new Russian assault around Kreminna, along a northern stretch of the eastern front.
* Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield accounts.
POLITICS/ECONOMY/SOCIETY
* President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s economy had weathered the worst effects of sanctions and was expected to show modest growth this year, despite what he said were attempts to undermine certain industries.
* A quarter of Ukraine’s population is at risk of developing a serious mental health condition as the country grapples with a year-long Russian invasion, a top health official said.