NYT : Russia - Ukraine War Briefing January 06, 2023

 

January 6, 2023

By Carole Landry Editor/Writer, Briefings Team

Welcome to the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, your guide to the latest news and analysis about the conflict.

A 36-hour unilateral cease-fire called by President Vladimir Putin over Orthodox Christmas failed to take hold. A visit by the president of Belarus to one of his military bases added to fears that Russia could launch a new ground offensive from Belarus. The U.S. announced sanctions against Iranians involved in building drones that Russia has used to strike Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. Get the latest updates here.

A German Marder infantry fighting vehicle during NATO exercises in Lithuania in October.Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Ukraine gets fighting vehicles

For the first time, the U.S., Germany and France will each send armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine, a significant escalation in Western military support after almost 11 months of war.

The combat vehicles are not tanks, which President Volodymyr Zelensky has requested for months, but they will strengthen Ukraine’s capabilities on the battlefield, military experts say. They could also open the door to deliveries of even more powerful weapons as Ukraine warns of a planned Russian offensive in the spring.

The announcements from Paris, Berlin and Washington signal that Ukraine’s allies are gearing up for another bloody year, as the war enters a new phase of Ukrainian offensives against dug-in Russian defenses, my colleagues Steven Erlanger and Thomas Gibbons-Neff report.

The Biden administration today announced a new $3 billion package of military assistance for Ukraine that will include Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The Bradleys will offer Ukrainian soldiers greater protection and firepower than any of the trucks or armored personnel carriers the West has sent to date, my colleague John Ismay reports.

The Bradley can carry troops into battle and support them with a 25-millimeter gun that can fire explosive rounds — smaller than the guns of U.S. tanks like the M1 Abrams, but still capable of taking out Russian tanks. “It’s not a tank, but it’s a tank killer,” a Pentagon spokesman said. The U.S. will send 50 of the vehicles, according to an official.

Germany and the U.S. will also supply Kyiv with a second Patriot missile battery.

A Patriot antimissile system launcher in Rzeszow, Poland, in March.Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Germany’s announcement that it would provide its Marder infantry fighting vehicle was a long awaited U-turn.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz had rejected Ukraine’s requests for the vehicles out of concern that the deliveries could drag NATO into the war. Scholz argued that no other Western country was supplying them and that Germany would not go it alone.

That argument appeared to fall to the wayside when France on Wednesday announced deliveries of its AMX-10 RC vehicles, turning up pressure on Germany to follow suit. The U.S. and Germany announced the contribution after a phone call between President Biden and Scholz.

The three vehicles are arguably the most advanced armored vehicles sent by the West to Ukraine, occupying a category of war machines that are not quite armored personnel carriers, though some can carry troops, nor are they tanks.

The Pentagon said that providing the Bradley vehicles and the Patriot air defense system had become more feasible because the war was dragging on, providing time to train Ukrainian forces to use them.

Der Spiegel reported that the decision to make the new deliveries was based on the analysis, shared by the three allies, that the Ukrainian army needed more heavy equipment to break Russian positions in the south and east of the country. Germany will provide up to 40 Marders, according to the report.

“This year Ukraine will receive weapons from the allies that it failed to get in 2022,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba wrote in a Facebook post. “The first week of 2023 proves it. The time of weapons taboo has passed.”

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In Ukraine

Ukraine’s G.D.P. fell by 30.4 percent in 2022, the largest decline since independence in 1991. Agriculture has been particularly hard-hit. More than 60 percent of Bakhmut, a Donbas city targeted by Russia, has been destroyed, a Ukrainian official said. Ukraine’s security service is seeking to prosecute two high-ranking Russian military officials for ordering strikes on civilian targets. The first Russian prison convicts who were recruited to fight in Ukraine have completed their service and have been pardoned, Russian state media reported. Ukraine should plan to take Crimea with assistance from the West, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defense minister, writes in Foreign Affairs.

Around the world

Key figures in Germany who are pushing a pro-Russia stance have links to the Russian state or the far right, a Reuters investigation has found. The U.N. has disbanded a fact-finding mission to a Russian prison camp, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners were killed in an explosion, after it failed to receive the necessary security guarantees.

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Evidence is mounting that Russian forces have used sexual violence as a weapon of war. Ukrainian prosecutors have opened 154 cases of sexual crimes.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back Monday. — Carole