O VOO DO CORVO

 

16m ago

11.08 GMT

Summary of the day so far …

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/feb/01/russia-ukraine-war-live-zelenskiy-signals-reforms-ahead-of-eu-summit-in-kyiv-netanyahu-open-to-mediator-role-if-asked#maincontent

 

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in remarks on Tuesday night that his administration was planning to introduce changes as part of attempts to proceed with unusually rapid and complex negotiations to secure European Union membership, Reuters reports. Ukraine is holding “summit” talks with EU officials on Friday.
• “What is very important is that we are preparing new reforms in Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said. “These are reforms which in many aspects will change the social, legal and political realities by making them more humane, more transparent and more effective.”
• The media has been reporting in Ukraine that two high profile anti-corruption raids have been carried out on Wednesday morning, targeting oligarch Igor Kolomoisky and former interior minister Arsen Avakov.
• El País is reporting that Spain will initially send between four and six Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. The FT is today reporting that Italy is to join forces with France in supplying air defences to Ukraine.
• The US is readying more than $2bn worth of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons, two US officials briefed on the matter told Reuters.
• The Kremlin said on Wednesday that longer-range rockets reportedly included in an upcoming package of military aid from the US to Ukraine would escalate the conflict but not change its course. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also told reporters that there were no plans for Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold talks with US President Joe Biden.
• Senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Wednesday talks were already under way on securing longer-range missiles and attack aircraft from foreign partners to help repel Russian forces.
• Germany’s vice-chancellor Robert Habeck has spoken out against his country delivering fighter jets to Ukraine, saying such a move would “probably” be a step too far for western allies weighing up support for Kyiv’s cause against fears of being drawn into an outright war.
• Pro-Russian forces have claimed in Russian media that Bakhmut is nearly encircled. Tass quoted Col Vitaly Kiselev on behalf of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic saying “Bakhmut has practically been ‘embraced’ from three sides, an intensive knocking out of the enemy is underway. They are trying, and I am sure that they will succeed … to go to the Chasiv Yar area, from where intensive shelling is going on back to Soledar, Bakhmut.”
• Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne is reporting that the Kinburn Peninsula, a strip of land that protrudes from the southern side of Kherson oblast on the left bank of the Dnieper River, is in the “grey zone”, with neither Ukrainian or Russian military fully in control of the territory.
• The British Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update says that recent days have seen “some of the most intense shelling of the conflict” along the Dniepr River. “This has included continued shelling of Kherson city,” the ministry notes – adding that, outside the Donbas, Kherson is the city most consistently shelled in the conflict. “Russia’s precise rationale for expending its strained ammunition stocks here is unclear. However, commanders are likely partially aiming to degrade civilian morale and to deter any Ukrainian counterattacks accross the river,” the ministry adds.
• Austria’s President Alexander Van der Bellen and the Green Party’s vice president of the German Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt both visited Kyiv on Wednesday, Van der Bellen travelled to Bucha to pay respects at the mass grave discovered there after Russian forces retreated from occupying the city in the Kyiv region in the early stages of the war.
• Ukraine should be able to join Nato as soon as the war is over, new Czech president-elect Petr Pavel said on Wednesday.
• Ukraine’s grain harvest may decrease again in 2023 to 49.5m tonnes from around 51m tonnes expected in 2022, deputy economy minister Denys Kudyn said.