This year will be one of “recovery and preparation on both sides, like 1916 and 1941-42 in the last world wars,” said Marc Thys, who retired as Belgium’s deputy defense chief last year with the rank of lieutenant general.
Looking ahead
To assess prospects for the year ahead, POLITICO asked analysts, serving officers and military experts to give their view on the course of the war.
Nobody could provide a precise roadmap for 2024, but all agreed that three fundamentals will determine the trajectory of the coming months. First, this spring is about managing expectations as Ukraine won’t have the gear or the personnel to launch a significant counteroffensive; second, Russia, with the help of its allies, has secured artillery superiority and, together with relentless ground attacks, is pounding Ukrainian positions; and third, without Western air defense and long-range missiles as well as artillery shells, Kyiv will struggle to mount a credible, sustained defense.
“The year will be difficult, no one can predict from which direction Russia will go or whether we will advance this year,” said Taras Chmut, a Ukrainian military analyst and sergeant with the Naval Forces Marine Corps Reserve.
It’s clear, however, that Ukraine is on the back foot.
After many weeks of bloody fighting, Russia finally took the fortress city of Avdiivka this month. Without pausing for a breather, its military proceeded to launch attacks on other key Ukrainian strongpoints and logistical hubs: Robotyne in the region of Zaporizhzia, Kupiansk in Kharkiv, and Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region.
[ad_2]
Joshua Posaner, Veronika Melkozerova, Stuart Lau, Paul McLeary and Henry Donovan
Sergei Bubka was Ukraine’s most iconic sportsman. Now his name is mud.
The legendary pole vaulter — a towering figure in post-Soviet Ukraine; dominating world championships and smashing records before becoming an elite sports politician — has been linked to business conducted in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories, while he lives it up in glitzy Monaco.
As Ukraine continues to fight off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in the freezing, soggy Donbas trenches, there is no greater sin. Bubka, the former athletic hero and native of Ukraine’s east, is now seen by many Ukrainians as a Russian collaborator.
For the man who once soared, bringing pride to newly independent Ukraine, how did it all go so wrong?
Mont Blanc sold fuel to Russian occupiers in the Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian puppet state in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian media outlet discovered — and published — three contracts worth more than $14,000 at the time. While the money is comparatively small compared with the billions sloshing around in Moscow’s war economy, any dealings with Russian occupiers are a red line for Ukrainians.
The company owns at least six gas stations in the occupied Donetsk region and Bubka’s brother Vasiliy is listed as the company’s director on all contracts. After the reports, Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, opened an investigation, and Vasiliy has now been charged in absentia with collaborating with the Russians and “assisting a terrorist organization.”
In September, Bubka hit back at the reports, posting a video online in which he said: “I have always fought for Ukraine, but now a campaign to destroy my reputation has begun against me. I have not been to the occupied territories since 2014. I didn’t visit my relatives and I wasn’t even able to attend my mother’s funeral this year. I have nothing to do with any business in the occupied territory.”
POLITICO reached out directly to Bubka’s press team for comment but they did not respond.
Bubka’s protestations, however, have failed to convince Ukrainians — and some of the country’s most prominent athletes — that he’s showing enough support for Kyiv’s war effort.
A major investigation by Ukrainian outlet Bihus.Info revealed Bubka’s company, Mont Blanc, was officially registered in Russia | Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images
“When the war began, all athletes cooperated and waited for a statement from Bubka at the very least. We drafted a letter, but it never bore Bubka’s signature,” Yaroslava Mahuchikh, the reigning world high jump champion, told POLITICO.
The athletes were demanding a ban on the National Olympic Committees of Russia and Belarus. Bubka is one of the influential 107 members of the International Olympic Committee.
“We called and wrote to him. He made a statement later but it was meaningless. Nothing more came from him,” added Mahuchikh.
Bubka threatened a lawsuit against the Bihus journalists, but so far that has not been filed. He wanted to “defend his dignity,” said Vadym Gutzeit, boss of Ukraine’s National Olympic Committee. In the meantime, the same outlet published two more contracts from May 2023 showing Bubka’s further business dealings in the Russian-controlled DPR.
While legal drama swirls in Ukraine, Bubka has been living on the French Riviera, according to reports in Ukrainian media and a person close to his family who was granted anonymity to discuss personal dynamics.
In Monte Carlo, Bubka attends AS Monaco football matches in the VIP zone. The Ligue Un club is owned by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who is subject to Ukrainian sanctions but not EU, Monegasque or U.S. measures.
The rejection Ukrainians feel from Bubka extends down the ex-pole vaulter’s family tree.
Tennis players also sought help from the influential sports politician, as his son, Sergei Bubka Jr., was a professional tennis player himself and still works within the sport.
“We had a very meaningful conversation with Sergei [junior] during a tournament in Miami,” said the coach of a Ukrainian tennis player. “He promised to definitely convey our vision of tennis and the support we need from the NOC and the IOC to his father. Nothing happened.
“He still shows up at all the major tournaments but now doesn’t make eye contact with me. He continues to communicate with representatives of the aggressor countries, even with those who openly support the war,” the coach added.
POLITICO asked Sergei Bubka Jr. for a response, but he also did not reply.
Bubka Sr. also actively avoided Ukrainian track and field athletes when he encountered them at the athletics World Championships in Eugene, Oregon in July 2022, according to one person with knowledge of the incident. They were walking toward Bubka and as they were about to greet the former champion he turned his head away.
As Ukraine continues to fight off Russian invasion in the freezing, soggy Donbas trenches, Bubka is now seen by many Ukrainians as a Russian collaborator | Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images
“I respect him as an athlete, but not as a person,” added Mahuchikh.
While Ukraine’s other superstar athletes including Mahuchikh, footballers Oleksandr Zinchenko and Andriy Shevchenko and legendary boxers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko have all backed the war effort and condemned Putin, Bubka’s remarks about Russia have been more tepid.
“I was traveling by train from Kyiv to Lviv. Some people nearby didn’t have food, and I shared what I had with them. I needed then to drive to Uzhhorod to cross the border. I felt what it’s like to be a refugee,” Bubka said, in his first statement about the war in April 2022, about two months after Moscow launched its all-out attack.
As Ukrainian law enforcement agencies told Ukrainska Pravda, Bubka left the country on March 1, 2022, with a special permit (men of military age are not allowed out of Ukraine without permission). After that, he exited the country two more times. The last time he left was on July 4, 2022 — and he did not return.
“The war must stop, peace and humanity must prevail,” was all he could muster about Russian aggression.
Bubka was adored by Ukrainians in the 1990s, as the most prominent athlete to emerge from the country following its independence after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
He was the first pole vaulter to clear 6 meters and held 17 outdoor and 18 indoor world records. During Bubka’s active career, he began organizing the Pole Vault Stars tournament in Donetsk, a city which erected a monument in his honor in 1999, where the Luhansk native spent much of his life.
After retiring in 2001, Bubka shifted his focus to politics. He became a member of the IOC in 2008. From 2002 to 2006, he was a member of the Ukrainian parliament, mainly representing the Party of Regions.
In 2005, he replaced Viktor Yanukovych — the controversial pro-Kremlin former president who triggered the widespread Euromaidan protests in winter 2013-14 and who lived in the same apartment building in Donetsk as Bubka did for years — as the head of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee, holding his position until November 2022.
Bubka ran unsuccessfully both to be the IOC president in 2013 and lead the world athletics federation in 2015.
For those failed campaigns, Ukrainian athletes are counting their blessings.
Ukraine is threatening to take Brussels and EU member countries to the World Trade Organization if they fail to lift restrictions on its agricultural exports to the bloc this month.
The country’s grain exports — its main trade commodity — are currently banned from the markets of Poland, Hungary and three other EU countries under a deal struck with the European Commission earlier this year to protect farmers from an influx of cheaper produce from their war-torn neighbor.
The glut, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of the country’s traditional Black Sea export routes, has driven a wedge between Ukraine and the EU’s eastern frontline states which have been among the strongest backers of Kyiv’s military fightback.
The restrictions, already extended once, are due to expire on September 15. Amid speculation that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will let them lapse, Poland and Hungary have threatened to impose their own unilateral import bans, in violation of the bloc’s common trade rules.
“With full respect and gratitude to Poland, in case of introduction of any bans after [September 15], Ukraine will bring the case against Poland and the EU to the World Trade Organization,” Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s deputy economy minister, told POLITICO.
Kyiv has argued that the restrictions violate the EU-Ukraine free-trade agreement from 2014.
Kachka’s comments backed up a warning this week from Igor Zhovka, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. If Brussels fails to act against the countries that violate the trade agreement, Kyiv “reserves the choice of legal mechanisms on how to respond,” Zhovka told Interfax-Ukraine.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said Kyiv reserved the right to initiate arbitration proceedings under its association agreement with the EU, or to apply to the WTO.
“We do not intend to retaliate immediately given the spirit of friendship and solidarity between Ukraine and the EU,” explained Kachka. But, he added, the systemic threat to Ukrainian interests “forces us to bring this case to the WTO.”
Crisis warning
Russia’s war of aggression and partial occupation has cut Ukraine’s grain production in half, compared to before the war, while Moscow’s withdrawal in July from a U.N.-brokered deal allowing safe passage for some seaborne exports has raised concerns that EU-backed export corridors won’t be able to cope.
The bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, struggled to explain to European lawmakers at a hearing on Thursday how Brussels would handle the situation after September 15.
Wojciechowski, who is Polish, also appeared to sympathize with the right-wing government in Warsaw, which has latched on to the fight over Ukrainian grain as a campaign issue ahead of mid-October general elections in which it is seeking an unprecedented third term.
The bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, struggled to explain to European lawmakers how Brussels would handle the situation after September 15 | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA
The curbs should be extended at least until the end of the year; otherwise “we will have a huge crisis again in the five frontline member states,” Wojciechowski said, adding that this was his personal position and not that of the EU executive.
The Commission’s decision in April to restrict imports to the five countries, which came with a €100 million aid package, met widespread disapproval from other EU governments and European lawmakers for undermining the integrity of the bloc’s single market.
Kachka, in written comments sent in response to questions from POLITICO, said there was no evidence of price deviations or a significant increase in grain supplies that would justify extending the import restrictions. Kyiv had engaged in “constructive cooperation” with the Commission, the five member states, as well as Moldova, a key transit hub for Ukrainian exports to the EU.
“We got a lot of support for ensuring better transit of the goods through the territory of neighboring member states, including Poland and Hungary,” Kachka said. “During [the] last two months we significantly advanced cooperation with Romania on transportation of goods from Ukraine.”
KYIV — Ukraine’s long-range Beaver drones seem to be making successful kamikaze strikes in the heart of Moscow, but Serhiy Prytula is coy about how much he knows.
“We are not sure whether we are involved in this,” he says with a charming but inscrutable smile, when asked about these mysterious new weapons.
Prytula rose to fame — just like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — as an actor, TV star and comedian, but is now best known for his contribution to the war, running a foundation that acquires components, helps support domestic arms production and supplies front-line forces. Tracking down parts for drones has proved to be one of his fortes.
Whether or not Prytula played any role in finding parts for the Beaver, it has now joined the ranks of other homegrown creations such as the Shark, Leleka and Valkyrie.
From the outside, his foundation looks like any other nondescript five-story apartment block in the quiet side streets of Kyiv. Inside, it is a chaotic human hive of volunteers, preparing packages and dispatching deliveries to soldiers on the front. On August 9, the team packed 75 drones for military units. That’s barely a drop in the ocean, given the needs of Ukraine’s forces across a 1,000-kilometer front, but every extra eye in the sky can help save dozens of lives.
The crowd of young, energetic volunteers at Prytula’s headquarters epitomizes an important dimension of the war: Ukrainians are increasingly taking matters into their own hands when it comes to weapons supply. With the defense ministry and the traditional state arms sector widely criticized for inefficiency and tarnished by corruption scandals over past years, the country is now witnessing an explosion of private enterprise to deliver kit to the front lines and to ramp up domestic production in the most hazardous of conditions. With arms-makers being prime targets for Russian cruise missiles, factories are spreading their manufacturing over numerous secret locations.
This sense that Ukrainians need to take the initiative at home both by scouring the global arms bazaar for hi-tech gizmos and by making more of their own heavy armor and shells is only amplified by the looming threat of a return to the White House by Donald Trump, who argues that America should not be “sending very much” to Ukraine and that Kyiv should sue for peace with the invader. Other Republican candidates have only heightened Ukrainians’ fears that the next U.S. president could sell out their young democracy to the Kremlin.
In addition to the aerial drones, there have been other homegrown success stories — Ukrainian-made armored vehicles are on the front lines beside U.S. Bradleys and locally made maritime drones have hit Russian ships in the Black Sea.
Not that anyone reckons going it alone is an option. Ukraine cannot even begin to match the vast military expenditure of Russia — Kyiv is expected to spend €24 billion on defense over 2023, while Russia is probably splurging well over €80 billion — so foreign assistance will always prove vital to keeping Ukraine in the fight.
But that’s no reason to sit idly by. Almost an entire country has mobilized for national defense, and there are many ways in which entrepreneurial private suppliers are now proving nimbler than state behemoths and bureaucrats in getting soldiers what they need.
When it came to the key question — on every Ukrainian’s mind — of continued Western support, Prytula stressed the efforts that Ukrainians were making to defend themselves made it less likely that outside aid would diminish. “I am convinced that they will keep supplying us with weapons because the world sees the war efforts of Ukrainian society.”
Beaver blitz
The back story of the Beaver is a closely guarded secret.
Last year, Ukrainian blogger and volunteer Ihor Lachenkov announced he was aiming to collect 20 million hryvnia (about €500,000) to produce and buy five Beaver drones for military intelligence, and later posted pictures of himself hugging one. Since then drones that looked like Beavers have hammered Russian oil depots and other military targets deep inside Russian territory and even hit Moscow’s business district. Officially, Ukraine is saying nothing about where this kit is coming from, and men such as Lachenkov and Prytula provide a useful smokescreen.
The country is now witnessing an explosion of private enterprise to deliver kit to the front lines | Sergey Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Prytula in late July also showed off grinning pictures of himself walking past three Beaver drones on a landing strip, quipping ironically: “We have no idea what can fly to Moscow.”
Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Prytula’s foundation has raised $135 million, which has been used to buy more than 7,000 drones, 1,200 vehicles, over 17,000 communication devices and much more.
When asked about his role in getting the Beaver drones, Prytula diplomatically said a volunteer’s job is to buy what the military needs and hand it over. “But it is not always necessary to talk about it. We honestly always say that we have nothing to do with it. When we see oil bases are exploding somewhere in Russia, or that there are some attacks on military facilities, we are glad that our army has learned to take out the enemy outside the country,” Prytula said.
Indeed, Prytula’s volunteers play a key middleman role in acquiring components more quickly than the state bureaucracy can.
China is a key part of the puzzle as the Ukrainian defense ministry cannot buy Chinese-made civilian drones directly. Shenzhen-based drone maker DJI no longer openly sells to Russia or to Ukraine, so the key trick is to acquire their wares quickly from third countries, or pick up parts and components internationally that can be assembled by Ukrainian technicians. There is a boom in small Ukrainian arms producers, with more than 100 companies active in the field.
“For the Russians, it was always easier to get [the Chinese products] in the never-ending race. So, when I hear Ukrainians managed to snatch up 10,000 components for … drones from Russians, I am happy,” Prytula said, sitting in his office, beside a giant wooden map of Ukraine.
This sense that Ukrainians need to take the initiative at home is only amplified by the looming threat of a return to the White House by Donald Trump, who argues that America should not be “sending very much” to Ukraine and that Kyiv should sue for peace with the invader | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
“The defense ministry also can’t buy [drones] that are not in serial production yet. But we can, and the producers can reinvest the money to increase the number, if soldiers’ feedback from the front was good,” Prytula continued. “So, by donating money people are not only helping the army, but also stimulating domestic military production.”
The game-changing role of drone producers has also made them a target. Over the weekend, Russia attacked a theater in the center of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, where drone producers and volunteers had organized a closed meeting with the help of the local military administration. Most of them managed to escape to shelter but people walking around the theater on the central square did not, with seven killed and 129 injured.
Bringing it all back home
While almost everyone now wants to get involved in the defense business, that wasn’t always the case. Just as Russia was building up its military from 1991 to 2014, Ukraine neglected its own arms factories. In the wild years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, illegal networks smuggled out arms. While the country remained a heavyweight military producer, it focused on export earnings rather than tailoring weapons for Ukraine’s own forsaken troops.
“No one predicted any military conflicts either with Russia or other countries,” Maksym Polyvianyi, acting director of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries, told POLITICO. “In a way, Russia’s 2014 invasion boosted our defense industry. Dozens of defense companies appeared and started the modernization of Ukrainian armory and the army.”
Still, the old scourge of corruption held the country back, even after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the state arms industry was rocked by scandals in which money was siphoned off, even as the country faced open conflict against Russia in the east.
Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 forced another change, however, accelerating diversification from the state industrial complex. “As of 2022, Ukrainian armed forces buy up to 70 percent of defense products from private military companies,” Polyvianyi said.
Under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the state arms industry was rocked by scandals in which money was siphoned off, even as the country faced open conflict against Russia in the east | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
With the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s defense producers became primary targets for Russian missiles. Many were bombed. But others managed to relocate to western Ukraine and spread out production.
“You have to be creative to survive nowadays. Two months after the start of the invasion, we resumed our work,” Vladislav Belbas, director general of Ukrainian Armor, told POLITICO. Since 2018, Ukrainian Armor produced the Varta and Novator armored vehicles, as well as 60mm, 82mm, and 120 mm-caliber mortars for the army. “We recently restarted production even though we’ve lost an important components contractor. It is now located on the territory controlled by Russia.”
Secrecy is also crucial. “We do everything to protect our staff, hide information about our production whereabouts. We move and test equipment at night, when it is more difficult to track us. We try not to concentrate equipment in one place,” Belbas said.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, stressed output was rising dramatically but that it was inconceivable to match Russia without major foreign support. “In seven months of 2023, we made 10 times more artillery and mortar ammo than in the entire 2022. But we are still very far from what we need,” he told POLITICO. “Today we have a war of such a scale that the entire capacity of the free world is not enough to support our consumption. We definitely cannot do this without help.”
Ministry malaise
The defense ministry — the main supplier of weapons, food, uniforms and other necessities — is struggling to shake off a reputation for graft and inefficiency.
In a high-profile profiteering scandal earlier this year, it transpired the ministry had paid absurdly inflated prices for soldiers’ rations to a contractor. The ministry denies violations, but keeps hiding behind military secrecy.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, stressed output was rising dramatically but that it was inconceivable to match Russia without major foreign support | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Other more recent scandals and procurement hiccups have focused on the ministry’s failure to secure delivery of everything it paid for. In private, Ukrainian officials admit the defense ministry is not up to scratch in supplying the army, and some Ukrainian lawmakers openly criticize the minister, Oleksii Reznikov, over his record on procurement.
The Ukrainian government has found alternative ways to cover some of the needs of the Ukrainian army, with the digital transformation ministry engaging in drone supplies, using state donations platform UNITED 24, and liberalizing customs and production rules for drones in Ukraine.
“President Zelenskyy took domestic defense production under personal control,” Kamyshin said.
Prytula, the founder of the foundation, said it was hard to judge the defense ministry during war. “They are quite successful when it comes to accumulating help in the international arena, but have some troubles at home. I think the defense ministry is doing what it can in terms of its responsibility. But with such a war it is never enough,” he said.
But Polyvianyi noted that’s where volunteers were coming into their own as parallel supply lines, filling the gaps left by the ministry. “The task of the state today is to provide heavy equipment. Without help, the state cannot provide all the needs of each army unit. Charitable foundations work in close connection with the ministry of defense and other structures.”
That’s a partnership in which Prytula is one of the most important players. But he is among the first to admit that all of Ukraine’s Herculean efforts at home will amount to nothing without the support of the international coalition.
“So it is hard to imagine we can win if we’re left on our own. As in the war of two formerly Soviet armies, the one with more people and weapons will win. Only better technology can help change the situation,” Prytula said. “It will be very difficult for us to fight alone with such a huge monster. But the civilized world has two options: to help us restore our 1991 borders, or to throw away all claims of shared values and just watch us bleed.”
KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s move to equate wartime corruption with treason is triggering a backlash from officials and watchdogs, who warn the plan could hobble Ukraine’s main anti-graft forces.
Two senior officials following the proposal, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, say concerns are growing within Ukraine’s anti-graft agencies that Zelenskyy’s plan will take top corruption cases away from their oversight and pass them to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which falls under the president’s command.
The SBU could, potentially, have the power to bury corruption cases involving top officials. The move, the officials say, could put Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure under threat, and anti-corruption watchdogs are sounding the alarm.
By equating corruption to treason, Zelenskyy’s office is manipulating the public’s desire for justice, saidVitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (Antac), a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization that monitors graft. In reality, Shabunin added, Zelenskyy’s office is pursuing other goals: to protect high-level officials from corruption charges and obtain tools to destroy opponents.
“SBU will investigate the same cases as NABU [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine], which means that evidence in ‘sensitive’ cases for the president’s office will be destroyed. After [President’s Office Deputy Head Oleg] Tatarov’s case was transferred from NABU to the SBU — it was buried there … Now the office wants to make that into practice,” Shabunin warned.
As journalists and anti-graft organs start to uncover more alleged corruption schemes during the first months of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion which began in February 2022, Zelenskyy thinks those days were so tough that officials should be cut some slack.
“February and March 2022 — it was a fight for the existence of Ukraine. If I see the corruption cases dated that time, I demand solid evidence. If there is one [evidence], the guilty must be punished by court, not public opinion,” Zelenskyy said in a televised interview. “As for my idea of equating corruption to state treason during wartime, I think it will be a very serious instrument to make them not even think about it [corruption].”
In practice, it will mean the collapse of the anti-corruption system, Antac said in a statement.
“According to the sources of the Anti-Corruption Center, the draft law will give the right to investigate top corruption to the SBU — a security service, controlled by the president’s office,” Antac said in a statement. Current and former senior officials in the SBU have been named by Ukrainian media as being close to Zelenskyy’s office — an accusation that was brushed off by Zelenskyy’s right-hand man Andriy Yermak as “conspiracy theories.”
Zelenskyy acted to begin the process of changing the law after another case of wartime corruption was uncovered last week, in which two high-ranking Ukrainian officials were named as suspects in an embezzlement scheme involving the procurement of humanitarian aid.
“I don’t know whether Ukrainian MPs will support my idea, but I will definitely propose it … We have to implement systemic changes. This is the way to fight corruption,” Zelenskyy said.
He added that his office will submit the bill to Ukraine’s parliament within a week.
“This is the way to fight corruption,” Zelenskyy said | Sergei Chuzavkov/AFP via Getty Images
“I have set a task, and the legislators of Ukraine will be offered my proposals on equating corruption with high treason during wartime,” Zelenskyy said Sunday evening. “I understand that such a weapon cannot operate constantly in society, but during wartime, I think it will help.”
Corruption scandals in Zelenskyy’s administration have drawn increased attention at the same time as the country is pushing to start membership talks with the European Union.
The deadline for Ukraine’s seven-step progress is approaching in October and the country, so far, has fulfilled only two steps, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna said during a conference in Kyiv earlier this month. Still, Stefanishyna said, partners acknowledged tremendous progress Ukraine made during the war and she still hopes accession talks will start in December.
Though Zelenskyy personally has not been implicated in scandal, some 77 percent of Ukrainians think he is responsible for ongoing corruption in the government and local military administrations, according to a poll by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank published at the beginning of August.
Zelenskyy’s allies hit back at any suggestion he is to blame, amid repeated scandals that have rocked the government in 2023 in the humanitarian aid, and military recruitment and procurement sectors. And they support the president’s move to put wartime corruption on par with treason.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office, told POLITICO the president’s initiatives will strengthen anti-corruption infrastructure and its effectiveness.
“The president is starting this discussion to put a clear ‘equal’ sign in the mass consciousness between wartime corruption and treason. Strengthening the punishment for corruption crimes and removing the possibility of release on bail for those accused of corruption is a demonstration of the seriousness of his intentions,” Podolyak said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stepped in to call for restraint late Tuesday in an effort to end an escalating diplomatic spat with Ukrainian ally Poland.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kyiv had summoned Warsaw’s envoy after a senior Polish official suggested Ukraine should be more grateful for the support it has been receiving from Poland since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
“We greatly appreciate the historical support of Poland, which together with us has become a real shield of Europe from sea to sea. And there cannot be a single crack in this shield,” Zelenskyy said.
“We will not allow any political instants to spoil the relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples, and emotions should definitely cool down,” the president added.
Poland has been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters since Moscow’s aggression ramped up in 2022. But in recent months, its relations with Kyiv have been hurt by Warsaw’s decision to extend a ban on some Ukrainian agricultural exports, which the Polish government considers a threat to the interests of domestic farmers.
Initially focused on grain, the dispute is now shifting to soft fruit such as raspberries and currants, with Poland’s farmers — who are set to be a key constituency in the upcoming Polish general elections in October — complaining that lower-priced imports from Ukraine are undercutting them.
The brewing contretemps escalated Tuesday after Ukraine summoned the Polish ambassador to Kyiv over “unacceptable” comments made by a senior Polish official.
In an interview with Polish media, Marcin Przydacz, head of Poland’s international policy office, said Kyiv should “start appreciating the role Poland has played for Ukraine in recent months and years” — sparking ire from Ukrainian officials who hauled in Warsaw’s ambassador and prompting Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki then to slap Kyiv down.
“The summoning of the Polish ambassador — a representative of the country that was the only one left in Kyiv on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — to the Ukrainian foreign ministry should never have happened,” Morawiecki said.
“Given the enormity of the support Poland has given Ukraine, such mistakes should not happen,” the prime minister added.
KYIV — An overnight naval drone attack against a Russian tanker in the Black Sea signals a potential new front in the Ukraine war, with Kyiv delivering its strongest message to date that it is willing to target Moscow’s all-important shipments of oil and fuel.
The battle for supremacy in the Black Sea is ramping up fast, with massive implications for global energy and food security. The attack on the tanker off Crimea came only a day after another Ukrainian marine drone — a flat, arrowhead-shaped vessel packed with explosives — targeted a Russian naval base near the port of Novorossiysk, badly damaging a warship.
“The tanker was damaged in the Kerch Strait during an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday. “The crew is safe, the Maritime Rescue Center informed us. The engine room was damaged. Two tugboats arrived at the scene of an emergency with a tanker in the Kerch Strait, the question of the towing vessel is being resolved,” it said.
Russia’s Federal Marine and River Transport Agency reported it was a SIG oil and chemical tanker — a ship whose owner, St. Petersburg-based company Transpetrochart, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 for supplying jet fuel for Russian forces in Syria.
Tensions are rising in the Black Sea after Russia last month announced it was withdrawing from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative and started attacking Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast and on the Danube River with missiles, destroying tens of thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain.
After those attacks and the blockade, Ukrainian officials issued a statement in July that Russian vessels will be no longer safe in the Black Sea. Kyiv’s defense ministry said in a statement that such vessels “may be considered by Ukraine as carrying military cargo with all the corresponding risks” from midnight Friday.
On Saturday, Kyiv announced a “war risk area” around Russian ports on the Black Sea, specifically citing the ports of Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, Sochi and Taman. The declaration will be in effect from August 23 “until further notice,” it said.
‘Completely legal’
Marine Traffic, an online maritime tracking site, has the latest position of the SIG tanker fixed near the Kerch Strait “at anchor.”
Russia’s Marine and River Transport Agency reported all 11 crew members on board were safe and that the tanker was struck in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side, presumably as a result of an attack by a marine drone. By morning, the water pouring to the engine room has been staunched, and the vessel was afloat, Russian official said.
Ukraine almost never directly takes responsibility for these kinds of attacks. However, Vasyl Malyuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, has previously claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Crimean bridge and hinted that there will be more similar attacks soon.
“Anything that happens with the ships of the Russian Federation or the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely logical and effective step in relation to the enemy. Moreover, such special operations are conducted in the territorial waters of Ukraine and are completely legal,” Malyuk said in a statement on Saturday.
“So, if the Russians want that to stop, they should leave the territorial waters of Ukraine and our land. And the sooner they do it, the better it will be for them. Because we will one hundred percent defeat the enemy in this war.”
Waters near Russian-occupied Crimea and the Kerch Strait are Ukrainian territorial waters, according to international maritime law.
“Since 1991, Russia has systematically used the territorial waters of Ukraine to organize armed aggressions: against the Georgian people and against the people of Syria,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a social media post on Saturday.
“Today, they terrorize peaceful Ukrainian cities and destroy grain, condemning hundreds of millions to starvation. It’s time to say to the Russian killers, ‘It’s enough.’ There are no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas,” the ministry said.
The Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk came under fire from across the Ukrainian border in the early hours of Wednesday, according to local governors.
Both officials blamed Ukraine for the attack — claims which have not been independently verified.
Statements from the regions’ governors say one woman was injured in the attack, which targeted the town of Valuyki in Belgorod and the village of Tyotkino in Kursk.
Belgorod’s Governor Viacheslav Gladkov said Valuyki was shelled for more than an hour, and that Russian air defenses shot down three targets and one drone. Another 12 shells from Grad multiple rocket launcher systems (MLRs) were fired at a residential area, according to Gladkov. Eight buildings and a powerline were damaged, and a woman suffered shrapnel injuries.
Kursk’s Governor Roman Starovoit said 12 shells were fired at Tyotkino, damaging a school.
In the last few months, Russian regions on the border with Ukraine and even further east have come under frequent shelling and drone attacks.
Russia claims that Ukraine attacked Moscow with at least five drones on Tuesday. Kyiv rarely claims responsibility for such attacks. Following Tuesday’s events, Andriy Cherniak, a representative of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence, told POLITICO that such attacks “are the consequences of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.”
The Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are demanding an explanation from Beijing after China’s top envoy to France questioned the independence of former Soviet countries like Ukraine.
Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, said in an interview on Friday with French television network LCI that former Soviet countries have no “effective status” in international law.
Asked whether Crimea belongs to Ukraine, Lu said that “it depends how you perceive the problem,” arguing that it was historically part of Russia and offered to Ukraine by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
“In international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have the status, the effective [status] in international law, because there is no international agreement to materialize their status as a sovereign country,” he said.
The comments sparked outrage among Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia — three former Soviet countries.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs said in a tweet that his ministry summoned “the authorized chargé d’affaires of the Chinese embassy in Riga on Monday to provide explanations. This step is coordinated with Lithuania and Estonia.”
He called the comments “completely unacceptable,” adding: “We expect explanation from the Chinese side and complete retraction of this statement.”
Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, called the comments “false” and “a misinterpretation of history.”
Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, shared the interview on Twitter with the comment: “If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic States don’t trust China to “broker peace in Ukraine,” here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis.”
Kyiv also pushed back strongly against the ambassador’s comments.
“It is strange to hear an absurd version of the ‘history of Crimea’ from a representative of a country that is scrupulous about its thousand-year history,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said in a tweet on Sunday. “If you want to be a major political player, do not parrot the propaganda of Russian outsiders.”
France in a statement on Sunday stated its “full solidarity” with all the allied countries affected, which it said had acquired their independence “after decades of oppression,” according to Reuters. “On Ukraine specifically, it was internationally recognized within borders including Crimea in 1991 by the entire international community, including China,” a foreign ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying.
The foreign ministry spokesperson also called on China to clarify whether the ambassador’s statement reflects its position or not.
The row comes ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, where relations with China are on the agenda.
Doubts are growing about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut against relentless Russian assaults, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is digging in and insists his top commanders are united in keeping up an attritional defense that has dragged on for months.
Fighting around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbas dramatically escalated late last year, with Zelenskyy slamming the Russians for hurling men — many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group — forward to almost certain death in “meat waves.” Now the bloodiest battle of the war, Bakhmut offers a vision of conflict close to World War I, with flooded trenches and landscapes blasted by artillery fire.
In the past weeks, as Ukrainian forces have been almost encircled in a salient, lacking shells and facing spiking casualties, there has been increased speculation both in Ukraine and abroad that the time has come to pull back to another defensive line — a retrenchment that would not be widely seen as a massive military setback, although Russia would claim a symbolic victory.
In an address on Wednesday night, however, Zelenskyy explained he remained in favor of slogging it out in Bakhmut.
“There was a clear position of the entire general staff: Reinforce this sector and inflict maximum possible damage upon the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video address after meeting with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy and other senior generals to discuss a battle that’s prompting mounting anxiety among Ukraine’s allies and is drawing criticism from some Western military analysts.
“All members expressed a common position regarding the further holding and defense of the city,” Zelenskyy said.
This is the second time in as many weeks that Ukraine’s president has cited the backing of his top commanders. Ten days ago, Zelenskyy’s office issued a statement also emphasizing that Zaluzhnyy and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, agreed with his decision to hold fast at Bakhmut.
The long-running logic of the Ukrainian armed forces has been that Russia has suffered disproportionately high casualties, allowing Kyiv’s forces to grind down the invaders, ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive expected shortly, in the spring.
City of glass, brick and debris
Criticism has been growing among some in the Ukrainian ranks — and among Western allies — about continuing with the almost nine-month-long battle. The disquiet was muted at first and expressed behind the scenes, but is now spilling into the open.
On social media some Ukrainian soldiers have been expressing bitterness at their plight, although they say they will do their duty and hold on as ordered. “Bakhmut is a city of glass, bricks and debris, which crackle underfoot like the fates of people who fought here,” tweeted one.
A lieutenant on Facebook noted: “There is a catastrophic shortage of shells.” He said the Russians were well dug in and it was taking five to seven rounds to hit an enemy position. He complained of equipment challenges, saying “Improvements — improvements have already been promised, because everyone who has a mouth makes promises.” But he cautioned his remarks shouldn’t be taken as a plea for a retreat. “WE WILL FULFILL OUR DUTY UNTIL THE END, WHATEVER IT IS!” he concluded ruefully.
Iryna Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine’s 93rd brigade, also gave a flavor of the risks medics are facing in the town. “Those people who go back and forth to Bakhmut on business are taking an incredible risk. Everything is difficult,” she tweeted.
A Ukrainian serviceman gives food and water to a local elderly woman in the town of Bakhmut | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
The key strategic question is whether Zelenskyy is being obdurate and whether the fight has become more a test of wills than a tactically necessary engagement that will bleed out Russian forces before Ukraine’s big counter-strike.
“Traveling around the front you hear a lot of grumblings where folks aren’t sure whether the reason they’re holding Bakhmut is because it’s politically important” as opposed to tactically significant, according to Michael Kofman, an American military analyst and director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Kofman, who traveled to Bakhmut to observe the ferocious battle first-hand, said in the War on the Rocks podcast that while the battle paid dividends for the Ukrainians a few months ago, allowing it to maintain a high kill ratio, there are now diminishing returns from continuing to engage.
“Happening in the fight now is that the attrition exchange rate is favorable to Ukraine but it’s not nearly as favorable as it was before. The casualties on the Ukrainian side are rather significant and require a substantial amount of replacements on a regular basis,” he said.
The Ukrainians have acknowledged they have also been suffering significant casualties at Bakhmut, which Russia is coming ever closer to encircling. They claim, though, the Russians are losing seven soldiers for each Ukrainian life lost, while NATO military officials put the kill ratio at more like five to one. But Kofman and other military analysts are skeptical, saying both sides are now suffering roughly the same rate of casualties.
“I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it’s doing in Bakhmut,” tweeted Illia Ponomarenko, the Kyiv Independent’s defense reporter.
Shifting position
Last week, Zelenskyy received support for his decision to remain engaged at Bakhmut from retired U.S. generals David Petraeus and Mark Hertling on the grounds that the battle was causing a much higher Russian casualty rate. “I think at this moment using Bakhmut to allow the Russians to impale themselves on it is the right course of action, given the extraordinary casualties that the Russians are taking,” retired general and former CIA director Petraeus told POLITICO.
But in the last couple of weeks the situation has shifted, said Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine officer and now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the kill ratio is no longer a valid reason to remain engaged. “Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces,” he tweeted. Lee says Ukrainian casualties have risen since Russian forces, comprising Wagner mercenaries as well as crack Russian airborne troops, pushed into the north of the town at the end of February.
The Russians have been determined to record a victory at Bakhmut, which is just six miles southwest of the salt-mining town of Soledar, which was overrun two months ago after the Wagner Group sacrificed thousands of its untrained fighters there too.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has hinted several times that he sees no tactical military reason to defend Bakhmut, saying the eastern Ukrainian town was of more symbolic than operational importance, and its fall wouldn’t mean Moscow had regained the initiative in the war.
Ukrainian generals have pushed back at such remarks, saying there’s a tactical reason to defend the town. Zaluzhnyy said on his Telegram channel: “It is key in the stability of the defense of the entire front.”
Volodymyr Zelensky and Sanna Marin attend a memorial service for Dmytro Kotsiubailo, a Ukrainian serviceman killed in Bakhmut | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Midweek, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have been urging the Ukrainians since the end of January to withdraw from Bakhmut, fearing the depletion of their own troops could impact Kyiv’s planned spring offensive. Ukrainian officials say there’s no risk of an impact on the offensive as the troops scheduled to be deployed are not fighting at Bakhmut.
That’s prompted some Ukrainian troops to complain that Kyiv is sacrificing ill-trained reservists at Bakhmut, using them as expendable in much the same way the Russians have been doing with Wagner conscripts. A commander of the 46th brigade — with the call sign Kupol — told the newspaper that inexperienced draftees are being used to plug the losses. He has now been removed from his post, infuriating his soldiers, who have praised him.
Kofman worries that the Ukrainians are not playing to their military strengths at Bakhmut. Located in a punch bowl, the town is not easy to defend, he noted. “Ukraine is a dynamic military” and is good when it is able “to conduct a mobile defense.” He added: “Fixed entrenches, trying to concentrate units there, putting people one after another into positions that have been hit by artillery before doesn’t really play to a lot of Ukraine’s advantages.”
“They’ve mounted a tenacious defense. I don’t think the battle is nearly as favorable as it’s somewhat publicly portrayed but more importantly, I think they somewhat run the risk of encirclement there,” he added.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion, senior Ukraine opposition politicians and former ministers were brimming with frustration. They’d been imploring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with them — something he’d not done since his landslide election nearly two years before.
They’d also been urging him to boost funding for the country’s armed forces for months, clamoring for Ukraine’s reservists to be called up as America’s warnings of an invasion intensified — an invasion Zelenskyy still thought unlikely. They wanted intensive war-planning, including the drafting and publication of civil defense orders, so people would know what to do when the guns roared.
“Ukraine is trapped with a national leader who does not think strategically,” Lesia Vasylenko, a lawmaker and member of the liberal and pro-European political Holos party, had told me five days before the invasion.
“I think that’s the thing he will be blamed for later. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about refusing to have in your entourage experts who know what questions to ask, and having advisers who can contradict and challenge you, and we may pay a price for that,” she’d fumed.
Of course, Zelenskyy’s missteps — as Vasylenko and many other opposition lawmakers see them — have since been forgiven, but they have not been forgotten. And these missteps form the basis of their worries for post-war Ukraine. They see a pattern that will become even more troubling when the guns fall silent, arguing that the president’s strengths as a lionhearted wartime leader are ill-suited for peacetime.
War hasn’t done anything to temper Zelenskyy’s impatience with governing complexities or with institutions that don’t move as fast as he would like or fall in line fast enough. He prefers the big picture, ignores details and likes to rely on an inner circle of trusted friends.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now — even hero-worshipped — by a starstruck West for his inspirational wartime rhetoric, spellbinding oratory and skill at capturing the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw, Zelenskyy floundered as president before Russia invaded. Few gave him much chance of being reelected in 2024, as his poll numbers were plummeting — his favorability rating was at 31 percent by the end of 2021.
He had promised a lot — probably too much — but achieved little.
“Ukraine has two main problems: the war in the Donbas and the fear of people investing in the country,” Zelenskyy had said shortly after his election win. But his anti-corruption efforts stalled and were unhurried, while his promise to solve the problem of the Donbas went nowhere. And in his early eagerness to clinch a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declined a sit-down, some criticized Zelenskyy for thinking too much of his powers of persuasion and charisma.
“He thought peace would be easy to establish because all you needed to do was to ‘look into Putin’s eyes’ and talk to him sincerely,” said lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
“He became president without any political experience, or any experience in managing state structures. He thought running a state is actually quite simple. You make decisions and they have to be implemented,” Kniazhytskyi told me. And when things went wrong, his reaction was always, it’s “the fault of predecessors, who need to be imprisoned,” Kniazhytskyi said.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now, he floundered as president before Russia invaded | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Yet, Zelenskyy’s transformation from disappointing peacetime leader to, in the hyperbolic words of French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, “a new, young and magnificent founding father” of the free world, has been startling.
Even his domestic critics doff their caps to him for his strengths as a superb communicator: His daily addresses to Ukrainians have steadied them, given direction and boosted morale, even when spirits understandably flag. And they acknowledge he likely saved the country by declining U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s offer for “a ride” out of Kyiv.
“He has become a compelling leader,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the upcoming “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the Russian War.” According to Karatnycky, Zelenskyy’s strengths as a communicator match the times. “He’s good at channeling public opinion, but he’s more effective now because the country is much more united and surer about its identity, interests and objectives. He’s still the same guy he was — an actor and performer — but that makes him an ideal war leader because he’s able to embody the public impulse,” he added.
But when normal politics are in play and the public isn’t united, Zelenskyy’s an inconsistent leader who switches the script and recasts the story to chase the vagaries and whims of public opinion. “When the public purpose is clear, he has great strength, and in wartime, he has behind him the absolute power of the state. But when the carriage turns into a pumpkin again, he’s going to have to cope with a very different world,” Karatnycky concluded.
And that world hasn’t really gone away.
Domestic political criticism is mounting — though little noted by an international media still enraptured by Zelenskyy’s charismatic appeal and enthralled by the simple story of David versus Goliath.
Meanwhile, in the Verkhovna Rada — the country’s parliament — frustration is building, with lawmakers complaining they’re being overlooked by a government that was already impatient of oversight before the war and now shuns it almost entirely. Zelenskyy has only met with top opposition leaders once since Russia invaded — and that was nearly a year ago.
“The routine of ministers being questioned by the Rada has been abandoned,” said opposition lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of the European Solidarity party and former deputy prime minister in the previous government of former President Petro Poroshenko.
“Wartime does call for urgent decisions to be taken quickly, and it calls for shortened procedures. And so that’s kind of understandable,” she said. “But we are seeing decisions being increasingly centralized and concentrated in fewer hands, and this is having an impact on the balance of political power, and [it’s] damaging to the system of governance we are trying to develop and the strengthening of our democratic institutions in line with the criteria laid out by the EU for convergence.”
Klympush-Tsintsadze is worried the recent wave of anti-corruption arrests was more an exercise in smoke and mirrors in the run-up to February’s EU-Ukraine summit — and one that might be used as an opportunity to centralize power even further. “If someone thinks that centralization of power is the answer to our challenges, that someone is wrong,” she added. “I think it is important to watch very closely how anti-corruption cases develop, and whether there will be transparent investigations, and whether the rule of law will be closely observed.”
According to Kniazhytskyi, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Zelenskyy is a populist politician and shares the personality-focused flaws of this breed. However, what cheers the opposition lawmaker is how Ukrainian civil society has bloomed during the war, how local self-government has been strengthened because of wartime volunteering and mutual assistance and how some state bodies have performed — notably, the railways and the energy sector.
It is this — along with a strong sense of national belonging forged by the conflict — that will form the foundation of a strong post-war Ukraine, he said.
WAREHAM, Dorset — Ukrainian fighter pilots will soon be trained in Britain — but Kyiv will have to wait a little longer for the modern combat jets it craves.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy left the U.K. Wednesday with a firm British commitment to train fighter jet pilots on NATO-standard aircraft, along with an offer of longer-range missiles.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has now been tasked with investigating which jets the U.K. might be able to supply to Ukraine, Downing Street announced — but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fell short of making actual promises on their supply, which his spokesman said would only ever be a “long-term” option.
Speaking at a joint press conference at the Lulworth military camp in Wareham, southern England, Sunak said the priority must be to “arm Ukraine in the short-term” to ensure the country is not vulnerable to a fresh wave of Russian attacks this spring.
Standing alongside Zelenskyy in front of a British-made Challenger 2 tank, Sunak restated that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to provision of military assistance to Ukraine, and said fourth-generation fighter jets were part of his conversation with the Ukrainian president “today, and have been previously.”
These talks also covered the supply chains required to support such sophisticated aircraft, Sunak said.
But he cautioned a decision to deliver jets would only be taken in coalition with allies, and said training pilots must come first and could take “some time.”
“That’s why we have announced today that we will be training Ukrainian air force on NATO-standard platforms, because the first step in being able to provide advanced aircrafts is to have soldiers or aviators who are capable of using them,” Sunak said. “We need to make sure they are able to operate the aircraft they might eventually be using.”
The first Challenger 2 tanks pledged by Britain will arrive in Ukraine by next month, Sunak added.
President Zelenskyy ramped up the pressure on Rishi Sunak joking that he had left parliament two years earlier grateful for “delicious English tea”, but this time he would be “thanking all of you in advance for powerful English planes” | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Describing his private conversations with Sunak as “fruitful,” Zelenskyy said he was “very grateful” that Britain had finally heard Kyiv’s call for longer-range missiles.
But he warned that without fighter jets, there is a risk of “stagnation” in his country’s battle against Russian occupation.
“Without the weapons that we are discussing now, and the weapons that we just discussed with Rishi earlier today, and how Britain is going to help us, you know, all of this is very important,” he said. “Without this, there would be stagnation, which will not bring anything good.”
Rolling out the red carpet
The U.K. had rolled out the red carpet for Zelenskyy’s surprise day-long visit, which alongside the visit to the military base included talks with Sunak at Downing Street, a meeting with King Charles at Buckingham Palace and a historic address to the U.K. parliament in Westminster.
Only a handful of leaders have made such an address in Westminster Hall over the past 30 years, including Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.
“We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it,” Zelenskyy told British lawmakers, after symbolically handing House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle a helmet used by one of Ukraine’s fighter pilots. The message written upon it stated: “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”
Zelenskyy’s call was backed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who urged Sunak to meet his request.
“We have more than 100 Typhoon jets. We have more than 100 Challenger 2 tanks,” he said. “The best single use for any of these items is to deploy them now for the protection of the Ukrainians — not least because that is how we guarantee our own long-term security.”
Western defense ministers will gather to discuss further military aid to Ukraine on February 14, at a meeting at the U.S. base of Ramstein in southwest Germany.
Sunak’s spokesman said that while Britain has made no decision on whether to send its own jets, “there is an ongoing discussion among other countries about their own fighter jets, some of which are more akin to what Ukrainian pilots are used to.”
Training day
Britain’s announcement marks the first public declaration by a European country on the training of Ukrainian pilots, and could spur other European nations into following suit. France is already considering a similar request from Kyiv.
Yuriyy Sak, an adviser to Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov, praised the U.K.’s decision and said allies “know very well that in order to defeat Russia in 2023, Ukraine needs all types of weaponry,” short of nuclear.
“A few weeks ago, the U.K. showed leadership in the issue of providing tanks to Ukraine, and then other allies have followed their example,” he said. “Now the U.K. is again showing leadership in the pilot training issue. Hopefully other countries will follow.”
The British scheme is likely to run in parallel to an American program to train Ukrainian pilots to fly U.S. fighters, for which the U.S. House of Representatives approved $100 million last summer. In October Ukraine announced a group of several dozen pilots had been selected for training on Western fighter jets.
The first Ukrainian pilots are expected to arrive in Britain in the spring, with Downing Street warning the instruction program could last up to five years. Military analysts, however, say the length of any such scheme could vary significantly depending on the pilots’ previous expertise and the type of fighter they learn to operate.
The U.K. announcement is therefore of “significant value” but “does not suggest the provision of fighter jets is imminent,” said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for airpower at the British think tank RUSI.
The British program is likely to involve simulators and focus on providing training on NATO tactics and basic cockpit procedures to Ukrainian pilots who already have expertise in flying Soviet-era jets, Bronk said.
The new training programs come in addition to the expansion in the numbers of Ukrainian early recruits being trained on basic tactics in the U.K., from 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers this year.
‘Unimaginable hardships’
Wednesday’s visit marked Zelenskyy’s first trip to the U.K. since Russia’s invasion almost a year ago and only his second confirmed journey outside Ukraine during the war, following a visit to the United States last December.
The Ukrainian president arrived on a Royal Air Force plane at an airport north of London Wednesday morning, the entire trip a closely guarded secret until he landed.
Recounting his first visit to London back in 2020, when he sat in British wartime leader Winston Churchill’s armchair, Zelenskyy said: “I certainly felt something — but it is only now that I know what the feeling was. It is a feeling of how bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.”
Zelenskyy travelled to Paris Wednesday evening for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In a short statement, Zelenskyy said France and Germany “can be game-changers,” adding: “The earlier we get heavy weapons, long-range missiles, aircraft, alongside tanks, the sooner the war will end.”
Macron said Ukraine “can count on France and Europe to [help] win the war,” while Scholz added that Zelenskyy expected attendance at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels Thursday “is a sign of solidarity.”
Dan Bloom and Clea Caulcutt provided additional reporting.
“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.
According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson — cited in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to explain that to succeed in Syria, one would have to use barbaric methods, as the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. “I am an ex-KGB man,” he expounded.
The remarks were meant, apparently, half in jest but, as ever with Russia’s leader, the menace was clear.
And certainly, Putin has proven he is ready to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subjugate a defiant Ukraine. His troops have targeted civilians and have resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded him.
In the next few weeks, he looks set to try to reverse his military failures with a late-winter offensive: very possibly by being even scarier, and fighting tooth and claw, to save Russia — and himself — from further humiliation.
Can the ex-KGB man succeed, however? Can Russia still win the war of Putin’s choice against Ukraine in the face of heroic and united resistance from the Ukrainians?
Catalog of errors
From the start, the war was marked by misjudgments and erroneous calculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overrated the abilities of their own forces, and failed to foresee the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European nations.
Kyiv didn’t fall in a matter of days — as planned by the Kremlin — and Putin’s forces in the summer and autumn were pushed back, with Ukraine reclaiming by November more than half the territory the Russians captured in the first few weeks of the invasion. Russia has now been forced into a costly and protracted conventional war, one that’s sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and led Kremlin infighting to spill into the open.
The only victory Russian forces have recorded in months came in January when the Ukrainians withdrew from the salt-mining town of Soledar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. And the signs are that the Russians are on the brink of another win with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, which is likely to fall into their hands shortly.
But neither of these blood-drenched victories amounts to much more than a symbolic success despite the high casualties likely suffered by both sides. Tactically neither win is significant — and some Western officials privately say Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been better advised to have withdrawn earlier from Soledar and from Bakhmut now, in much the same way the Russians in November beat a retreat from their militarily hopeless position at Kherson.
For a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes Putin will be banking in the coming weeks on his forces, replenished by mobilized reservists and conscripts, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to come in earnest sooner than spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned in press conferences in the past few days that Russia may well have as many as 500,000 troops amassed in occupied Ukraine and along the borders in reserve ready for an attack. He says it may start in earnest around this month’s first anniversary of the war on February 24.
Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will be in March — but at least before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”
All eyes on Donbas
The likely focus of the Russians will be on the Donbas region of the East. Andriy Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We’ve observed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, Putin gave the order to seize all of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
Other Ukrainian officials and western military analysts suspect Russia might throw some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eyes on a feint coming from Belarus mimicking the northern thrust last February on Kyiv and west of the capital toward Vinnytsia. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate there are only 12,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus currently, ostensibly holding joint training exercises with the Belarusian military, hardly enough to mount a diversion.
“A repeat assault on Kyiv makes little sense,” Michael Kofman, an American expert on the Russian Armed Forces and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “An operation to sever supply lines in the west, or to seize the nuclear powerplant by Rivne, may be more feasible, but this would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has deployed in Belarus,” he said in an analysis.
But exactly where Russia’s main thrusts will come along the 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts don’t expect Russia to mount a push along the whole snaking front — more likely launching a two or three-pronged assault focusing on some key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, on Kreminna and Lyman in Luhansk, and in the south in Zaporizhzhia, where there have been reports of increased buildup of troops and equipment across the border in Russia.
In the Luhansk region, Russian forces have been removing residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are aimed at clearing out possible Ukrainian spies and locals spotting for the Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.
Reznikov has said he expects the Russian offensive will come from the east and the south simultaneously — from Zaporizhzhia in the south and in Donetsk and Luhansk. In the run-up to the main offensives, Russian forces have been testing five points along the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff in a press briefing Tuesday. They said Russian troops have been regrouping on different parts of the front line and conducting attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.
Combined arms warfare
Breakthroughs, however, will likely elude the Russians if they can’t correct two major failings that have dogged their military operations so far — poor logistics and a failure to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually complementary effects, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.
When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff — as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry highlighted “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare.
Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistics problems may have largely been overcome. “There’s been a fair amount of reorganization in Russian logistics, and adaptation. I think the conversation on Russian logistical problems in general suffers from too much anecdotalism and received wisdom,” he said.
Failing that, much will depend for Russia on how much Gerasimov has managed to train his replenished forces in combined arms warfare and on that there are huge doubts he had enough time. Kofman believes Ukrainian forces “would be better served absorbing the Russian attack and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, then taking the initiative later this spring. Having expended ammunition, better troops, and equipment it could leave Russian defense overall weaker.” He suspects the offensive “may prove underwhelming.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They have been clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakouts needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea’s annexation and later in the Donbas, has argued waves of call-ups will be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses by sheer numbers.
And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest necessary for an attacking force to succeed.
Ukrainian officials think Russia’s offensive will be in March, before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western tanks | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images
But others fear that Russia has sufficient forces, if they are concentrated, to make some “shock gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British army infantry commander, is predicting “significant Russian gains in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could be — otherwise the shock risks dislodging Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear being that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then it is more likely pressure from some Western allies will grow for negotiations.
But Gerasimov’s manpower deficiencies have prompted other analysts to say that if Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hamper Russia’s chances to win the war.
“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his rule or international escalation — despite the fact his maximalist and unrealistic objective, the full conquest of Ukraine, likely requires the assumption of further risk to have any hope of success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week.
Wicked and scary Putin may be but, as far as ISW sees it, he “has remained reluctant to order the difficult changes to the Russian military and society that are likely necessary to salvage his war.”
KYIV — Russia has launched extensive missile raids across Ukraine and is building up troops near the northeastern city of Kupyansk to test Ukrainian defenses, just as Kyiv is warning that Moscow is gearing up to launch a new offensive.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, said in a statement that two Kalibr cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and NATO member Romania, before veering into Ukrainian territory. Romania, however, cautioned that radar only detected a missile launched from a Russian ship in the Black Sea traveling close to its airspace — some 35 kilometers away — but not inside its territory.
“At approximately 10:33 a.m., these missiles crossed Romanian airspace. After that, they again entered the airspace of Ukraine at the crossing point of the borders of the three states. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea,” Zaluzhnyy said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added, “Several Russian missiles flew through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. Today’s missiles are a challenge to NATO, collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped. Stopped by the world.”
Governors in Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Khmelnytskyi reported power cuts due to the barrage.
The attack started before dawn in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to the governor, Oleg Synegubov.
“Today, at 4:00 a.m., about 12 rockets hit critical infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv and the region. Currently, emergency and stabilizing light shutdowns are being employed. About 150,000 people in Kharkiv remain without electricity,” Synegubov said.
Synegubov said the barrage came the same morning as Russian invasion forces increased their attacks near Kupyansk, a city in the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces liberated last fall. “The enemy has increased its presence on the front line and is testing our defense lines for weak points. Our defenders reliably hold their positions and are ready for any possible actions of the enemy,” Synegubov said in a statement.
He also reported that about eight people were injured in one of the latest Russian missiles strikes in Kharkiv. Two of the victims are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, in the west of the country, Ukrainian air defense units are firing back at multiple cruise missile attacks. “That is Russian revenge for the fact that the whole world supports us,” Khmelnitskyi Governor Serhiy Hamaliy said in a statement. He also reported a missile strike in the city, saying that part of Khmelnitsky was without power.
Ukrainian Air Force Command reported the destruction of five cruise missiles and five of seven Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones Russia launched from the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Russians also launched six Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles from a Russian frigate in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian Air Force added that air defense units shot down 61 of 71 cruise missiles that Russia launched.
“The occupiers also launched a massive attack with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from the districts of Belgorod (Russia) and Tokmak (occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region),” the air force said in a statement. “Up to 35 anti-aircraft guided missiles (S-300) were launched in the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, which cannot be destroyed in the air by means of air defense. Around 8:30 a.m. cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95 MS strategic bombers.”
If Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes a quick reshuffle of generals can revive the fortunes of his faltering campaign in Ukraine and quell bitter turf wars among his commanders, he’s likely to be disappointed.
After only three months as overall commander of Russia’s war, General Sergei Surovikin has been replaced by his boss, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, the country’s most senior soldier. Colonel General Alexander Lapin was promoted to chief of the general staff of the ground forces.
Both Western security analysts and pro-war Russian military veterans, however, are skeptical this game of musical chairs will trigger any game-changing tactics or help restore momentum to the Russian campaign. Surovikin will continue as Gerasimov’s battlefield deputy.
They see the shake-up as largely political, and a sign of infighting in the Kremlin, with the defense ministry trying to reassert control of the management of the war and to curb the growing influence of paramilitary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the mercenary Wagner Group.
Prigozhin is seeking to seize the limelight by claiming to have made breakthroughs with a massive wave attacks in the east of Ukraine, using so-called penal battalions comprised largely of former prison inmates to deliver a rare Russian victory. This week, for example, Prigozhin claimed Wagner mercenaries had overrun the salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine retorts that fighting is still ongoing and that Prigozhin’s tactics are insane because of the huge casualties that he is willing to accept for negligible strategic gains.
In a sign of the personality politics that seem to be looming larger in the splintered Russian military, Prigozhin is also keen to depict himself as a fighter in helmet and flak jacket with his troops on the battle fronts.
The pro-war ultranationalist camp of Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has long been pushing for a restructuring of the top echelons of the command.
It looks, though, like Putin is not giving them the new arrangement they want, but is instead strengthening the hand of the ministry men, who are often the target of the radicals’ most excoriating denunciations.
General Armageddon
Surovikin, known as General Armageddon for overseeing a vicious bombing campaign in northern Syria in 2016, has not been the butt of the hardline camp’s anger. They credit him with having brought more tactical coherence and focus to Russia’s ground campaign. They had been calling instead for Gerasimov, who they blame for failing to seize Kyiv in the early days of the war, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Lapin, another of their bêtes noires, to be sacked.
Ultimately, Putin has chosen to deal with the internal power fissures plaguing the military by elevating Gerasimov and Lapin, and demoting Surovikin.
Rob Lee, an analyst at the U.S.-based security think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that Prigozhin had praised Surovikin, and suggested this week’s promotions may “partially be a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war.”
Influential pro-war Russian military blogs such as Rybar, which has a million followers on Telegram, were also scathing about the decision to replace Surovikin. The Rybar blog, the work of several authors all apparently well connected to the Russian military, credited Surovikin with achieving much in his three months as overall battlefield commander and for starting to bring some order to a chaotic campaign.
Russian President Vladimir Putin presents an award to Colonel General Sergei Surovikin on 28 December, 2017 | Alexei Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images
Rybar fumed Surovikin would be left taking the blame for recent debacles — including the Ukrainian missile strike on New Year’s Day on conscripts billeted temporarily at a college in Makiivka that may have left more than 400 dead. Western military experts say the Russians, who claim 89 died, laid themselves wide open to the devastating attack by crowding the soldiers in one building.
Lapin’s promotion has drawn disdain from Igor Girkin, a former intelligence officer and paramilitary commander who played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.
Girkin, who uses the pseudonym Igor Strelkov, said on his Telegram channel that Lapin’s new role must be “to put it mildly, a misunderstanding.” The appointment represents a “boorish” bid by the Russian defense ministry to demonstrate its invulnerability from criticism and impunity, he said. Lapin was sacked earlier this year after failing to rebuff a Ukrainian offensive that saw the Russians pushed out of the strategic town of Lyman, in the Donetsk region.
Chechen leader Kadyrov publicly blamed Lapin for the loss of Lyman, saying he should be stripped of his medals and rank and sent to the front line barefoot with a light machine gun to “wipe away his shame with blood.” Kadyrov’s outburst prompted a warning from the Kremlin to curb his criticism and to “set aside emotions.”
Surovikin’s appointment in October as overall commander of what Russia calls its special military operation was greeted with delight by Russia’s hawks. Kadyrov praised him as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in his social media post.
Russia’s defense ministry said the reshuffle amounted to “an increase in the level of leadership of the special military operation” and said the change was needed to boost the effectiveness of the military. It specifically cited “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare, the integration of infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually reinforcing and complementary effects, something Russia has failed to accomplish.
After his appointment, Russia made a conspicuous shift to pummeling civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, knocking out power stations and water facilities.
The decision to keep Surovikin as Gerasimov’s No. 2 has gone some way to mollify the ultranationalists, but it hardly answers their calls for a root-and-branch makeover of the top brass of Russia’s armed forces.
Over to you, Gerasimov
Whether Gerasimov, a veteran of Russia’s war in Afghanistan, can pull that off remains to be seen. He has experience as a battlefield commander in Ukraine: He oversaw Russian forces and pro-Russian insurgents in August 2014, outmaneuvering the Ukrainians at Ilovaisk in the Donetsk region, where more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. That battle forced then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to agree to peace talks.
Gerasimov is seen as an advocate of hybrid warfare and is the author of a doctrine, named after him, calling for combining military, technological, information, diplomatic, economic, cultural and other tactics to achieve strategic goals. In May, there were unconfirmed reports that he was wounded when visiting the frontlines, but Ukrainian officials denied the claims, saying he had left a command post shortly before they targeted it.
The Chechen leader and other hawks looked to him to reverse a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian successes and to turn the tide of war in Russia’s favor. The shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler, served in Chechnya and Syria. A ruthless and unscrupulous tactician, he oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and to send refugees toward Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a damning report.
General Sergei Surovikin has been replaced by his boss, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov | Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images
Since Gerasimov was part of a small circle of Kremlin hawks that advised Putin to invade Ukraine, his future likely now all depends on the outcome of the war. The job he has been given is “the most poisoned of chalices,” according to Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian military. “It’s now on him,” he added in a tweet.
Ukraine’s defense ministry took a more laconic approach to Gerasimov’s appointment.
Every Russian general “must receive at least one opportunity to fail in Ukraine,” it tweeted.
KYIV — Ukraine’s Orthodox worshippers have always celebrated Christmas on January 7 — but that will change for many this year, with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) for the first time allowing its congregations to celebrate on December 25.
This move creates a dividing line with Russia, which celebrates on January 7, and is likely to widen a rift between Ukraine’s two feuding churches.
In 2018, the OCU split from the similarly named Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which is seen as politically linked to Moscow and is facing public demands for its closure amid accusations that it is a hotbed of fifth columnists — that is, people who support and secretly help the enemies of the country they live in.
Indeed, the OCU’s decision to allow a shift of Christmas observance to December 25 (for those who want to) has already infuriated the Russian-oriented UOC.
“We are giving people the option to celebrate on a different day,” said Archbishop Yevstratiy Zoria of the OCU in Kyiv.
Yevstratiy told POLITICO there had been a groundswell for a change since 2017, when December 25 became a public holiday in Ukraine. Many of the church’s adherents had lobbied for a move away from the Julian calendar, which is observed by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The calls for the switch have only grown louder since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prompting the OCU to allow its 7,000 parishes to hold full religious services on December 25, if desired.
According to Yevstratiy, already before the invasion, more than a third of Ukrainians wanted to change to the Gregorian calendar. “The numbers are probably higher now, and we are having an experiment to try to understand what worshippers really want,” he said.
“We are not moving the day of Christmas,” he added. “This will be an additional day of worship,” with celebrations held in accordance with the official Julian church calendar.
In the meantime, the church will “consider what to do in the future, and we will observe closely how many congregations take up the opportunity to celebrate on December 25,” Yevstratiy continued.
Despite opposition from the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, in 2019 the OCU was granted ecclesiastical independence by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople — considered the spiritual leader of Orthodox believers worldwide. His decision revoked a centuries-old agreement that granted the patriarch in Moscow authority over the church in Ukraine.
Political differences underpin the the split between the churches of the predominantly Orthodox nation: Western-oriented OCU churches offered support to the Maidan protesters of 2014, which toppled Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow’s viceroy in Ukraine. Over recent years, the church been a strong advocate of Ukrainian statehood and sovereignty.
The Russian-tied UOC claimed in May to have ended its subordination to Moscow’s Metropolitan Kirill, a vociferous supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin — although few believe the split is sincere. The church’s spokesperson, Metropolitan Klyment, dismissed as a political stunt the OCU’s decision to allow its congregants to celebrate on December 25, claiming it as evidence of how the rival church is not a religious institution but a political organization eager to do the government’s bidding.
“Families historically are used to celebrating on [January 7],” he told POLITICO. “The people who go to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are not requesting any change,” he said. “It has been four years since the government announced December 25 as an official holiday, and since then, you have not seen people celebrating it as Christmas Day,” he added.
The Kyiv-headquartered UOC dismisses the charge that its decision to allow congregations to celebrate Christmas on December 25 has anything to do with politics. Instead, it is merely responding to “numerous requests and taking into account the discussion that has been going on for many years in the church and in society.”
The OCU response to the new Christmas option, says Archbishop Yevstratiy, is par for the course. “They have always treated us as a political group. They don’t accept us as a religious organization or as a church,” he said.
“It is very similar to how Russia treats Ukraine in general,” he continued. “From our side, we have often offered to start a dialogue without any preconditions, but they generally don’t respond — and when they do, they insist we acknowledge that we are not a church, have no canonical rights and that our clergy are not clergy.”
More than 1,600 parishes have defected from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church since it was recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople — about 1,000 of them since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582; the Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar, harks back to 46 B.C.
An overnight drone attack on Monday targeted the Engels airbase deep inside Russia for the second time this month, killing three servicemen in what appears to be a renewed sign of Ukraine’s readiness to target offensive threats way beyond its border areas.
Russian Telegram channels reported a strong explosion and a fire, while Russia’s state-run Ria-Novosti news agency, citing the defense ministry, said air defenses downed a Ukrainian drone heading towards the base. Engels air base is located about 600 km northeast of the Ukrainian border.
Delivering a symbolic blow, this second long-range attack on one of Russia’s most strategically important bases — home to nuclear-capable bombers — came on the same day the Russian army was celebrating the 107th anniversary of the creation of its air defense units.
The previous attack happened on December 5. New York Times has reported that Ukraine carried out the attack with drones and the help of a military reconnaissance unit coordinating it deep inside Russian territory. Russian authorities claimed that attack damaged two planes, killed three servicemen and wounded four others.
On Monday, locals reported a strong blast in the same airfield but the Russian defense ministry claimed no significant damage was done to its aircraft.
Ukraine has not taken responsibility for either strike.
“There is absolutely no threat to residents. Civil infrastructure facilities were not damaged,” Roman Busargin, governor of the Saratov region, said in a statement.
“Law enforcement agencies have been investigating the incident at a military facility.”
Busargin also issued a warning about criminal liability for spreading false information, claiming that news on the incident published in media and by citizens will be promptly sent to law enforcement agencies.
Engels airfield is a base for Russian strategic bombers used to carry missile strikes against Ukraine. In addition, those bombers are also a part of Russia’s nuclear triad, as they can carry nuclear warheads.
KYIV — Even when the Russians are invading your country, that doesn’t stop the clock when it comes to sweeping out corruption and fixing the judiciary in line with EU convergence criteria.
With the EU set to issue reports on Kyiv’s progress in March and then again in October, Ukraine’s advances on rule of law are swifter than expected, but it’s a case of two steps forward and one (very worrying) step back.
For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has declared that his country’s “future is in the EU,” it is vital to maintain momentum, when he knows Kyiv’s membership faces resistance from traditional EU members, whose powers would be diluted by such a big new member. France’s President Emmanuel Macron said in May that Kyiv was “in all likelihood decades” from EU membership, and Western European countries express constant concerns about insecurity, corruption and the cost of rebuilding a nation shattered by war.
In that context, Ukraine is now moving surprisingly quickly. The appointment of a new chief prosecutor has given the fight against graft a boost with many high-profile cases finally resulting in sentences. The Ukrainian parliament also liquidated the Kyiv Administrative District Court, infamous as the most corrupt court in Ukraine.
On the downside, however, concern is now growing over the Constitutional Court, with its supreme legal oversight that can overrule government decisions. A new reform threatens to allow political interference in a body that would filter candidates for judges. This could throw a major hurdle in the path of Ukraine’s European aspirations. Both the European Commission and the Venice Commission, a Council of Europe advisory body on constitutional law, have already sounded the alarm.
Shutting Ukraine’s most corrupt court
Ukraine’s liquidation of the Kyiv Administrative District Court is being widely viewed as one of the most positive steps in the battle against corruption, but it didn’t come easily.
Zelenskyy submitted the bill to kill off the court as a priority back in April 2021. However, the Ukrainian parliament did so only on December 13, four days after the U.S. Department of State sanctioned its chairman, Pavlo Vovk, for soliciting bribes in return for interfering in judicial and other public processes.
The U.S. sanction on the court’s head judge was the final straw, said Mykhailo Zhernakov, chairman of the board of the Dejure Foundation, a nongovernmental organization focusing on legal reform.
But Vovk’s removal was also the fruit of intense pressure from Ukrainian civil society groups that exposed the court’s misdeeds and anti-corruption organizations that investigated its lead judges.
In 2020, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) released the so-called Vovk tapes — wiretaps of both Administrative Court judges and top lawyers in connection to a criminal case against Vovk — which revealed a large number of fake lawsuits, unlawful rulings and pressure by Vovk on judges and officials.
“What made the Kyiv Administrative District Court so powerful was its unique jurisdiction that covered not only local authorities of Kyiv, but also all the government bodies located in Kyiv. And that means all government bodies,” Zhernakov said. “That broad jurisdiction gave them an enormous concentration of power. And that is why it must be divided with the creation of the new administrative court.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
After the tapes were published by local investigative journalists, the public got an insight into massive obstruction of justice and bribery flourishing at the highest level. All of the judges and officials identified on the tapes deny their authenticity to this day, however.
Vovk himself called the liquidation of the court “a rushed decision” by parliament, adopted under pressure from “certain activists and lobbyists groups.” British Ambassador Melinda Simmons, by contrast, called it a “good day for judicial reform.”
Rostyslav Kravets, a lawyer defending many Ukrainian judges, said the accusations against Vovk were all fabricated and slammed the court reform as “backed by foreign forces.”
Activists and Ukraine’s international partners have indeed repeatedly asserted that foreign experts should guarantee transparent competition over appointments in the Ukrainian judicial system, highly infiltrated by political connections, but Kravets resented the international pressure.
“This is wrong. Can you imagine me coming to London to help them elect judges?” Kravets said. “Europe has been trying to sell the idea that all judges in Ukraine are criminals, who take bribes. That forced many to leave their posts or rule in favor of unlawful decisions.”
A second step forward
The second major advance has come with the appointment of Oleksandr Klymenko as the chief anti-corruption prosecutor.
In 2021, the notorious Kyiv Administrative District Court blocked the appointment of the former detective from the NABU anti-corruption bureau. Klymenkobecamefamous for investigating a bribery case against another top official in Zelenskyy’s administration: Oleg Tatarov, deputy head of the president’soffice. Although Tatarov was charged with bribery, his case was transferred from the jurisdiction of independent anti-corruption bodies to the security service of Ukraine. Shortly afterward, the case died.
Deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, who is responsible for law enforcement, Oleg Tatarov | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty images
Tatarovpublicly promised to prove his innocence and said the case against him was a personal vendetta by Artem Sytnyk, then head of the NABU.
On the same day that Ukraine liquidated the administrative court, however, it made a major misstep on reforming its all-important Constitutional Court.
On December 13, Ukraine’s parliament voted on a law to reform the Constitutional Court, but watchdogs pointed out the potential for political interference in the way judges are appointed in the new system.
The new procedure establishes an advisory group of three government officials and three independent experts with the same number of votes during the selection of judges. They would choose candidates by a simple majority vote. The decision of the group is also not final, making it possible for candidates who did not pass the evaluation to still run for Constitutional Court seats.
On December 19, the Venice Commission recommended changing the new law and introducing a seventh member to the advisory group to give the independent experts a casting vote during the selection. It also recommended making the decisions of the advisory group binding, making it impossible for candidates with negative evaluations to become Constitutional Court judges.
Only the next day, however, Zelenskyy, on his way from the frontline city of Bakhmut to Washington, signed the bill into law, ignoring the Venice Commission’s recommendation.
“Simple majority voting means that independent experts will need the votes of the political appointees from the government to select a candidate to the next stage. With these kind of rules, the advisory group won’t be able to push through independent candidates,” said Zhernakov from the Dejure Foundation.
Ukraine’s reformists need pressure from abroad
Ukrainian civil society groups called on international partners to keep up their pressure over the Constitutional Court reform. Zhernakov argued that, because of the Russian invasion, some foreign partners were now shying away from public criticism of Kyiv in order not to play into the hands of Russia or of Ukraine’s critics in the EU.
“Due to Zelenskyy’s well-deserved popularity, international partners prefer not to criticize Ukraine as harshly as they did before as they don’t want to undermine him in any way during active warfare. But there has to be a red line,” Zhernakov said.
On December 23, the European Commission finally weighed in. Ana Pisonero, spokesperson for enlargement, said the Commission expected Ukrainian authorities to fully address the Venice Commission recommendations, and would monitor the process.
Vitaliy Shabunin, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based watchdog, said in a statement that, if not changed, the new selection procedure would give effective control over the Constitutional Court to the president’s office. The president’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
“This is a fantastic risk. The Constitutional Court is the only institution that currently limits political power in the country. And precisely because it is not controlled by the government, it can control the government,” Zhernakov said.
In a sign of the Constitutional Court’s importance, it ignited a crisis in 2020 when it recognized certain parts of Ukraine’s law as unconstitutional. That decision canceled public access to the electronic declaration of assets, as well as criminal punishment for lies in electronic declarations. Those changes practically paralyzed the fight against corruption in Ukraine, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention reported. The court’s decision was criticized by the Venice Commission and condemned by international society.
More than a thousand officials avoided responsibility for lying in declarations, and only the efforts of the authorities and the public made it possible to neutralize the threat to the anti-corruption infrastructure.
Civil society and international partners with the help of Zelenskyy managed to clean the Constitutional Court, as well as other high judicial authorities. And the ex-chairman of the court fled abroad.
When asked why Zelenskyy had now signed such a controversial law, Zhernakov said that while the Ukrainian government has been doing a lot to bring Ukraine closer to the EU, there are still people in the president’s office resisting change.
“And while Zelenskyy is in Bakhmut or in the U.S., they are slipping in things like this. Because they want to keep control over the key legislative institutions,” Zhernakov said.
Civil society is getting ready to fight back, although now the space for criticism is limited because of war. Zhernakov said the risk was that Russia would unfairly use criticism like that over the Constitutional Court to cast Ukraine as an undemocratic and corrupt country.
“Usually, Russian propaganda is baseless and can be refuted with simple fact-checking. But when instead of EU integration reforms the authorities sign the laws like the Constitutional Court one, they give not just a weapon, but a HIMARS to Russian propaganda,” Zhernakov said.
KYIV — There’s a nuclear threat hanging over Ukraine.
The atomic saber rattling by the Kremlin ranges from President Vladimir Putin’s threat to defend illegally annexed Ukrainian territory “by all means available,” to increasingly unhinged comments from former President Dmitry Medvedev and Moscow’s (false) hints that Ukraine is developing a nuclear “dirty bomb” — something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned might be Russia preparing for a so-called false flag attack.
For many Ukrainians, these are far from empty words and the country is getting ready.
The Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation in downtown Kyiv has one bomb shelter in the carpark below the building to protect staff from conventional Russian attacks and another to be used in case of a nuclear attack.
“The second shelter is equipped accordingly. It has a supply of medicines, food, drinking and distilled water, flashlights and batteries,” said TV star Serhiy Prytula, who heads the eponymous foundation.
“[Predicting the actions of] the Russian military and political leadership is always difficult if you use normal logic. We have been very unfortunate to have this neighbor. This is why anything connected to a nuclear threat should be taken very seriously, as a real threat, and prepare accordingly,” he said.
The language coming out of Moscow is worrying.
Earlier this month, Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, warned that Kyiv’s aim to recapture all of its lost territory “is a threat to the existence of our state and of a dismemberment of today’s Russia,” something he said was a “direct reason” to implement Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
The Russian military is on the back foot in Ukraine and setting off a nuclear weapon could be seen as a desperate measure by the Kremlin to force a halt in the war.
Kyiv’s reaction to Medvedev was swift.
An Ukrainian Emergency Ministry rescuer attends an exercise in the city of Zaporizhzhia on August 17, 2022, in case of a possible nuclear incident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, branded his nuclear threats “an act of suicide,” saying: “Russia will finally turn into enemy No. 1 for the whole world.”
Even Russia’s ally China is warning about the danger of using nuclear weapons. Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said: “Nuclear weapons cannot be used, a nuclear war cannot be waged.”
U.S. President Joe Biden told Putin that it would be an “incredibly serious mistake” to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Brace brace
Those international warnings aren’t stopping Ukrainians from prepping for the worst.
The authorities in the Kyiv region have hundreds of shelters that could be used in case of nuclear attack.
“The past eight months have taught us that anything can happen. As an official, I am preparing for the worst-case scenario, but I hope that everything will be fine,” Oleksii Kuleba, head of the capital region’s military administration, told local media.
Kuleba said the shelters are below ground, have ventilation, two entrances, and by November 15 should be equipped with radio sets — which Ukrainian authorities believe might be the only means of communications after a nuclear attack.
Ukraine’s government bodies have also recently published detailed instructions — informed by the country’s experience with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster — on what to do in case of a nuclear strike.
Secretary of the National security and defence council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
“The use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine is considered unlikely, and the main purpose of these threats is to scare Ukrainians and the world and force us to make concessions, and our partners to weaken their support for Ukraine,” say the instructions, which then add: “At the same time, Ukrainians must have an action plan in case of any emergency situations: the use of nuclear weapons, a ‘dirty bomb’ or in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant.”
The instructions detail everything from not looking at the blast — “when you notice a flash in the sky (or its reflection), in no case look in that direction” — to covering your ears to prevent damage from a shock wave and removing clothing that has been exposed to radiation. “Run for cover as soon as you can get back on your feet and when the blast wave from the use of nuclear weapons has passed,” they say.
In early October, the capital city’s administration said the city has enough potassium iodide pills — medicine to help prevent the absorption of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland — to distribute to medical facilities and family doctors “in case of a radiation threat or a radiation emergency.”
“If evacuation is necessary, potassium iodide will be distributed at evacuation points to members of the population who were exposed to the radiation zone, in accordance with the recommendations of medical professionals,” the administration added.
Meanwhile, many Kyiv residents are taking their own preventive measures.
Kristina Riabchyna, a sustainable stylist living in Kyiv and originally from Donetsk, has bought iodine tablets from a local pharmacy.
“I really want to believe that there won’t be a nuclear attack. But unfortunately, we have this insufferable neighbor, so we have no choice but to believe that this absurd thing might actually be possible,” she said.
“Buying potassium iodide was probably a way of coping with the fear,” Riabchyna added. “What I mean is, I have done what I can at this stage, for my safety and for my loved ones, I haven’t ignored the danger and this means I can carry on living my life. But it goes without saying that I understand that this isn’t a countermeasure that will save us if this threat becomes reality.”
Mykhailo, 49, and his mother in a school’s bomb shelter where they have stayed for nearly two months on June 4, 2022 in Velyka Novosilka, Ukraine | Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images
Foreigners in Kyiv are taking similar measures.
In recent weeks, staff working for an EU-funded project — they asked that the project not be identified — received thorough instructions on what to do in case of a nuclear attack or the use of a dirty bomb — a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material.
“Nuclear explosions can cause significant damage and casualties from blast, heat, and radiation but there are steps you can take to try to mitigate against the impact,” the instructions said, recommending that, “If warned of an imminent attack, immediately get inside the nearest building, ideally under ground, and move away from windows.”
The instructions go on to explain how to wash off radioactive fallout, how an electromagnetic pulse can damage electronic equipment and listen for advice on possible evacuation.
If the attack is a tactical nuclear strike on the frontlines far from Kyiv, then, “The only plan of action for our Kyiv-based staff in such a case is to jump into cars and to be on the border [with Poland] within a couple of hours,” said an EU national with the program, speaking on condition of not being identified.
Ukrainian troops on the front lines have been given potassium iodine tablets and also received training on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack — although spokespeople from the defense ministry and the military would not specify what those instructions were.
For Prytula, the charity boss, the danger of a nuclear attack won’t end soon.
“The threat of a nuclear weapon being used against Ukraine, or indeed any other country in the world, will be real as long as the Russian Federation exists,” he said.
