Ukraine’s troops will have to withdraw ‘bit by bit’ if promise of US military aid is not blocked by parliamentary wranglingsaid Volodymyr Zelensky. “Without U.S. support, that means no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no electronic warfare jammers, no 155-millimeter artillery shells,” Ukraine’s president told The Washington Post. “That means we take one step at a time, one small step at a time, and take a step back. We’re just trying to find a way not to take a step back.”
Huge Russian missiles and drone strikes hit thermal and hydropower plants in central-western Ukraine Officials announced Friday the latest barrage targeting the country’s damaged electricity infrastructure. Zelenskiy said the Kaniv hydroelectric power plant was targeted along with the Dnister power plant on the Dnister River in neighboring Moldova. Moscow “wants to recreate the environmental disaster in the Kherson region. But now not only Ukraine, but also Moldova are under threat,” he said on Telegram.
Ukraine announced an emergency power outage in several regions following the Russian attack. State power grid operator Ukrenergo said its power distribution centers were “forced to apply an emergency power outage schedule until the evening in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and Kirovograd.” Restrictive measures had already been introduced in the cities of Kharkiv and Kryvyi Rikh following last week’s Russian attack.
Poland’s prime minister says Europe is entering a “pre-war” era, warn that the continent is not ready He called on European countries to step up defense investment. In an interview with a European newspaper reported by the BBC, Donald Tusk said: “I don’t mean to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept of the past. It’s true, it started more than two years ago.” His comments come as Russian missiles hit Poland’s airspace during the attack on Ukraine. The announcement came days after the temporary invasion prompted Warsaw to step up military preparedness.
One person killed, two injured in Russian city of Belgorod Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, blamed the attack on a Ukrainian drone attack.
Russian security services say they have arrested three people from a “Central Asian country” who were planning the attack. Russian news agencies reported in the south of the country. The Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday that the trio was “planning a terrorist act to detonate devices in public places in the Stavropol region.” Russian television showed footage of several men being pinned to the ground by FSB agents.
Russia outnumbers Ukrainian troops on the front lines by 6 timesOleksandr Shirsky, who was recently appointed as Ukraine’s supreme commander, said in a rare interview published Friday that it had caused losses in troops and positions. He also said that the number of people the Ukrainian military would need to mobilize would be lower than initially expected. To prevent Russian invasion. President Zelenskiy said in December that the military was proposing to mobilize up to 500,000 more Ukrainians into the army as Russia stepped up its offensive along its 1,000-kilometer front. In an interview with Ukrainian media published on Friday, he said: A review of resources has “significantly reduced” this figure.
Ukraine received $1.5 billion (£1.2 billion) in funding under the World Bank programPrime Minister Denis Shmihal said, helped pay for the budget and social spending during the war.
Zelenskyy pressed for changes in officials in his inner circle, fired two deputy heads of his office and appointed a former high-ranking security official ambassador to neighboring Moldova. Friday’s presidential decree announced the dismissal of Andriy Smirnov, head of legal and policy affairs, and Oleksiy Dniprov, head of the agency’s “apparatus.” Zelenskiy announced the appointment of Oleksiy Danilov, former head of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, as ambassador to Moldova.
NATO member Romania says it has found debris of what appears to be an unmanned aircraft. On a farm near the Danube River and the border with Ukraine.
Zelenskyy announced that his income for 2022 had increased to 12.42 million hryvnia ($316,000/£250,000). This was up from 3.7 million hryvnia ($94,000) a year earlier, due to improved rent collection and the sale of some government bonds. According to the president’s website, most of Zelenskiy and his family’s income came from salaries, bank interest and rent paid from real estate. Zelenskiy called on public officials to disclose their income as part of efforts to increase transparency.
Russian prosecutors have asked the Ministry of Justice to consider classifying Soviet pop music queen Alla Pugacheva as a “foreign spy.”, the move would officially designate Russia’s most famous star as an enemy of the Kremlin. Pugacheva has expressed her distaste for the war in Ukraine.
