Ukraine war in Newsblog | Ukraine withdraws from Soledar

Day 337 since the beginning of the war: The USA is probably considering delivering Abrams tanks after all. Switzerland could soon release ammunition. All information in the news blog.

12:16 p.m.: Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is pleased with Germany’s decision to supply Leopard tanks. “Thank you @Chancellor Olaf Scholz,” writes Morawiecki on Twitter. The delivery to Ukraine is a big step towards stopping Russia.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had previously welcomed the decision by Germany and other countries to supply main battle tanks to Ukraine. It is the right decision, explains Sunak on Twitter.

11:35 a.m.: The Ukrainian army has said it has withdrawn from the fiercely contested town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine. After “months of difficult fighting,” the Ukrainian troops left the small town and retreated to other positions, military spokesman Sergiy Cherevaty told the AFP news agency. He did not name a date for the withdrawal.

Russia had already announced the capture of Soledar on January 13, but Ukraine had denied this. With the capture of Soledar, Russian forces claim their first notable victory after several setbacks in recent months.

10:57 am: According to official information, another senior official of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has had to leave because of the scandal surrounding the purchase of overpriced food for soldiers. “The Director of the Purchasing Department in the Ministry of Defense (Bohdan) Khmelnytskyi was fired,” Anastasiya Radina, head of the Committee on Combating Corruption in the Ukrainian Parliament, said on Facebook on Wednesday night. Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov had previously resigned because of the affair. Read more about it here.

Over the weekend, media reports in Ukraine caused a stir that the Ministry of Defense was buying food for its soldiers at prices up to three times higher than retail prices in stores. Experts also see the mass layoffs as a liberation from Head of State Volodymyr Zelensky, who, one year before the presidential election, does not want to tarnish himself with the image of a corrupt politician. In addition, he would otherwise have to fear for the continuation of the western aid that is essential to the war effort, it is said.

10.45 a.m.: Russia says the expected delivery of US Abrams tanks to Ukraine is pointless. They would be destroyed there, the Kremlin declares. Their potential for the Ukrainian military is overestimated. It’s expensive madness.

10.20 a.m.: The Russian government has tasked the prison authorities with setting up 25 penal colonies in the areas of Ukraine that have been annexed since the beginning of the war. Twelve prisons are being built in the Donetsk region, seven in Luhansk, three in the occupied part of the Cherson region and two in the Zaporizhia region, where an open prison camp is also to be built. This emerges from a government order on Tuesday, about which the state-run “Parlamentskaya Gazeta” reported.

9.34 am: According to British intelligence services, Russia has sent several tanks in poor condition to Ukraine. The armed forces there were reluctant to accept the tanks because of their miserable condition, the British Ministry of Defense said in its daily briefing. Specifically, it is about Russian T-15 Armata battle tanks, some of which Moscow has prepared for use in the Ukraine war, according to the British.