Tag: 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Six Leopard 2 tanks left Spain and are set to reach Ukraine in less than a week, Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles said this weekend. The United States, meanwhile, will start training Ukrainian forces on its Abrams tanks next month, seeking to get them on the battlefield against Russia before the end of the summer.

But even with shipments and training underway, the fighting vehicles donated by NATO allies to Ukraine will not have an immediate impact on its war with Russia, experts warn.

Steep learning curve: Modern main battle tanks are complicated pieces of weaponry. Looking formidable and rugged on the outside, much of their effectiveness on the battlefield comes down to sophisticated electronic and computer systems at their core. Those systems find targets and train the tank’s main gun on them.

Maintaining the tanks, repairing them and supplying the parts necessary requires detailed training all the way from the crews in the vehicles to the logistics trail supporting them, hundreds or maybe thousands of miles from the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

Logistical challenges: In addition to the time needed to train fighters, the tanks need to be maintained, officials said, which means managing the supply chain.

Because the Abrams is American-made, for example, it has “a very long logistics tail stretching back to the US,” said Drew Thompson, visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Key components that wear out or are damaged in battle will need to be replaced with US parts, which would have to be sent to a repair depot in Ukraine or possibly Poland, which is in the process of acquiring its own fleet of Abrams.

Thompson said the Pentagon is good at solving difficult logistical issues, “but the risk is high to both the US and Ukraine.”

“Being able to support Leopards from a European logistics base is definitely preferable,” Thompson said, referring to the model of tanks employed in 13 European countries.

The sheer number of Leopards available makes the support process easier, according to Drummond, who is an adviser to the manufacturer of the German tanks. More than 4,000 of the tanks are in service, and that means “spare parts are readily available from multiple sources,” he said.

CNN’s Al Goodman, Duarte Mendonca, Haley Britzky and Heather Chen contributed reporting to this post.

The European Commission denounced a decision by Poland and Hungary to ban imports of grain and other agricultural products from Ukraine.

“Unilateral actions are not acceptable. In such challenging times, it is crucial to coordinate and align all decisions within the EU,” EU Commission spokesperson Arianna Podestà told CNN in a statement Sunday.

Podestà said trade policy is an “exclusive competence” issue, referring to the alliance’s policies around decisions that must be made as a group, and not by individual member states.

The commission is requesting more information from the involved countries to assess the measures, the spokesperson said.

The bans in question: On Saturday, Poland banned imports of grain and other food products from Ukraine “to protect the Polish agricultural market against destabilization,” the Polish prime minister’s office said in a statement.  

Hungarian Agriculture Minister István Nagy announced Sunday that Budapest would take similar steps, temporarily banning the import of grain, oil seeds and other agricultural products from Ukraine.

“The government is committed to representing the interests of the Hungarian economic society,” Nagy said in a Facebook post Sunday, adding he was taking the step “in the absence of meaningful EU measures.”

What led up to the bans: When Russia invaded Ukraine, it blocked ports and sea routes used to export Ukrainian grain to Africa and the Middle East. Fearing widespread famine, the European Union lifted duties on grain from Ukraine to ease distribution to those global markets.

Ukrainian grain has since flowed into Poland, but much of it has remained in the country, bringing down the price and causing Polish farmers to suffer significant financial losses.

That’s spurred protests and calls for the European Commission — effectively the EU’s cabinet government — to intervene. But the international body only spurred further anger when it announced a draft decision to extend duty-free and quota-free imports of Ukrainian grain until June 2024.

CNN’s Mariya Knight and Jonny Hallam contributed to this report.

An orthodox church leader at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery is under investigation, according to a statement Saturday from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), who accuse him of “inciting religious hatred” and “justifying and denying Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.” 

As part of the investigation, the SBU said it found that Metropolitan Pavlo, Petro Lebid, “in his public speeches repeatedly insulted the religious feelings of Ukrainians, humiliated the views of believers of other faiths and tried to create hostile attitudes towards them, and made statements justifying or denying the actions of the aggressor country.”

“Investigative actions” were taken at the metropolitan’s places of residence, the SBU said. The operation was conducted under the supervision of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, according to the SBU.

Here’s what led up to the investigation: Metropolitan Pavlo is the abbot of the 980-year-old monastery, home of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), a branch of Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine that has been traditionally loyal to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.

Kirill is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a supporter of his war on Ukraine.

Tensions over the presence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra have risen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and an agreement that allowed the UOC to occupy the historic complex was terminated on March 10. The UOC was instructed to leave the premises by March 29.

In May 2022, the UOC cut ties with Moscow and declared “full independence,” but some members have maintained their loyalty. 

The metropolitan attended a court hearing Monday but felt unwell and had to go to a hospital, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said. 

Some more background: Since the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s Security Service said it has launched more than 40 “comprehensive counterintelligence and security measures” in the church environment of the UOC, “which were aimed at stopping the destructive activities of pro-Russian clergy.”

As a result of the measures taken by the SBU, 61 criminal proceedings were initiated against 61 clergymen, the agency said. “In total, the courts have already passed 7 sentences against individual clerics who sided with the enemy, including 2 who were used in the exchange for our servicemen,” it said. 

Based on SBU investigations, 17 UOC officials have been subject to sanctions by Kyiv and almost 250 clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church have been banned from entering Ukraine, the agency said. 

Ukraine has also terminated the citizenship of 19 UOC clergymen who were dual Ukrainian-Russian citizens, forcing them to leave the country, the SBU said.