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Nato’s eastern European leaders to meet with Biden and Nato Chief Jens Stoltenberg; Wagner chief says Russian military leaders are refusing to supply the group with munitions
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest.
Coming up today: US President Joe Biden is in Warsaw, Poland, where he will meet with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the ‘Bucharest Nine’ nations, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia.
Ukraine told schools on Tuesday to hold classes remotely from 22-24 February because of the risk of Russian missile strikes around the first anniversary of Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
Speaking before a crowd of thousands in the gardens of Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Joe Biden hailed the resilience of Ukraine’s people and the benevolence of Poland and other western allies in helping fend off the Russian invasion.
The US president said the attack on Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, and said new sanctions against Russia will be announced this week.
The foreign ministers of the G7 have said their countries would continue to impose economic costs on Russia and urged the broader international community to reject what they described as Moscow’s “brutal expansionism”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has given a long televised national address to the joint houses of the Russian parliament, in which he blamed the west for starting the war in Ukraine and promised a new fund to help those who had lost loved ones in what he referred to as Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Putin also announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). The foreign ministry later said Moscow intended to continue abiding by the restrictions outlined in the treaty on the number of warheads it could have deployed.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said he regretted Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the New Start bilateral nuclear arms control treaty and urged Moscow to reconsider.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces were maintaining their positions on the frontline in the east after Russia reported it was advancing on its main target in the area. Russia, trying to secure full control of two eastern provinces forming Ukraine’s Donbas industrial region, has launched repeated assaults, securing its biggest gains around the mining city of Bakhmut.
Eighteen Russian MPs are expected to attend a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna on Friday, the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and have been invited to a nationalist ball.
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