At least 10 civilians killed in new Russian shelling, Kyiv says; fierce fighting in eastern Donetsk battle – as it happened

It is coming up to 7pm in London – 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s a summary of the latest news:

• A new barrage of Russian shelling has killed at least 10 Ukrainian civilians and wounded 20 others in a day, the Associated Press (AP) reported, citing the office of Ukraine’s president. Regional officials said towns and villages in the east and in the south that are within reach of the Russian artillery suffered most. Six people died in the Donetsk region, two in Kherson, and two in the Kharkiv region, the AP quotes them as saying. A day earlier, missiles and self-propelled drones that Russian forces fired had hit deeper into Ukrainian territory, killing at least 11 people.

• Ukraine’s army claims to have killed 109 Russian soldiers and wounded a further 188 in one day during fighting around the village of Vuhledar in the eastern Donetsk oblast. Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for the eastern operational command of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the bloody death toll was recorded on Thursday, adding “Fierce fighting is ongoing. The enemy is indeed trying to achieve an intermediate success there, but thanks to the efforts of our defenders, they are unsuccessful.”

• Poland will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of the 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has already pledged, the former’s prime minister has said. Mateusz Morawiecki has told CTV News “we are ready to send 60 of our modernised tanks, 30 of them PT-91. And on top of those tanks, 14 tanks, Leopard 2 tanks, from in our possession.”

• Belgium has announced a package of an additional €93.6m (£84.5m / $104.7m) in military aid for Ukraine. The prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said that, taking into account previous spending, it amounted to the biggest ever military aid package given to another country by Belgium. The package will include surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank weapons, machine guns, grenades and munition.

• Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who visited Ukraine last week, said IAEA monitors reported powerful explosions near Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station on Thursday and renewed calls for a security zone around the plant.

• Ukraine’s state broadcaster reported that ten regions of Ukraine are using emergency power outages due to a power shortage in the network after Thursday’s Russian attacks, and the restoration of damaged facilities is ongoing.

• The Kremlin said on Friday that US President Joe Biden had the key to end the conflict in Ukraine by directing Kyiv to settle, but that Washington had so far not been willing to use it. “The key to the Kyiv regime is largely in the hands of Washington,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in his usual daily briefing. “Now we see that the current White House leader ... does not want to use this key. On the contrary, he chooses the path of further pumping weapons into Ukraine,” he added.

• Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador to Russia, will not improve ties between Washington and Moscow because the former is engaging in a “hybrid war” against the latter, the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Friday. Zakharova said Tracy’s room for manoeuvre would be limited due to what she said was fierce anti-Russian bipartisan feeling in the United States.

• The European Union wants swift accountability for “horrific” crimes in Ukraine, EU justice ministers have said. But the member states differ over how to bring prosecutions, seek evidence or fund war damage repairs. The bloc’s 27 justice ministers met in Stockholm, where they discussed collecting evidence as well as setting up a new international tribunal to prosecute Moscow’s aggression.

• Hungary will veto any European Union sanctions against Russia affecting nuclear energy, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told state radio on Friday.

• Ukrainian government officials who shirk their duties during wartime will be quickly removed, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday amid a crack down on corruption. More than a dozen officials have been removed this week after a series of scandals and graft allegations. Political analysts said Zelenskiy needs to show western partners and war-weary Ukrainians that he is serious about punishing misrule.

• Russia is violating the “fundamental principles of child protection” in wartime by giving Ukrainian children Russian passports and putting them up for adoption, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) chief Filippo Grandi has said. “Giving them nationality or having them adopted goes against the fundamental principles of child protection in situations of war,” Grandi said. Grandi said his agency was unable to estimate the number of children who had been given passports or put up for adoption, as access in Russia was extremely limited. Russia has said accusations Ukrainian children have been abducted are false.

• A 74-year-old Spanish man arrested over a spate of letter bombs sent to institutions including the prime minister’s office and the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid in late 2022 was trying to pressure Spain to drop its support for Ukraine, an investigating magistrate said on Friday. The man was remanded in custody as he was considered a flight risk to Russia.

• The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has met the Eritrean president, Isaias Afwerki, during a tour of African nations to shore up support for Russia, focusing on the “dynamics of the war in Ukraine”, Eritrea’s information minister has said.

• Ukraine would not rule out boycotting the Olympic Games if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete in the Paris 2024 Games, its sports minister said.

• Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor says it has blocked the websites of the CIA and FBI, accusing the two US government agencies of spreading false information.

Ukraine is setting up drone assault companies within its armed forces that will be equipped with Starlink satellite communications, it has announced, as it presses ahead with an idea to build up an “army of drones”.

According to Reuters, the general staff said the commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi signed off on the creation of the units in a project that will involve several ministries and agencies.

“The most professional servicemen” have already been chosen to lead the companies, each of which will receive drones and ammunition, Starlink terminals and other equipment, it said on Facebook. “We are doing everything to provide soldiers with modern technologies.”

Starlink is a satellite internet system operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, and widely used both by civilians and the military in Ukraine.

It will take about six months to train Ukrainian pilots for combat in western fighter jets, such as the US’ F-16, Kyiv has said, as it steps up its campaign to secure fourth-generation warplanes.

Reuters reports that Ukraine got a huge boost this week when Germany and the US announced plans to provide heavy tanks to Kyiv, which is now hoping the west will also provide long-range missiles and fighter jets.

Western military support has been vital for Kyiv and has rapidly evolved. Before the invasion, even the idea of supplying lethal aid to Ukraine was highly controversial, but western supplies have since shattered taboo after taboo.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said F-16s may be the best option for a multi-role fighter to replace the country’s current fleet of warplanes, which are older than modern Ukraine itself. He said Kyiv was using four types of Soviet-era planes.

The pilots are saying it is not a problem to fly the F-16, they could learn it within several weeks. To fight with these planes is a very different thing, to use all types of weapons. Pilots say they could master it in about half a year.

Ukraine uses its warplanes for intercept missions and to attack Russian positions.

Germany’s €100bn (£87.7bn, $108bn) special defence fund is no longer enough to cover its needs, the country’s new defence minister Boris Pistorius has said during an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Pistorius, who took office last week after the resignation of his predecessor, said Germany would also need to raise its annual regular defence spending from the current level of around €50bn.

Germany also needs to replenish its military hardware stocks, including replacements for the 14 Leopard tanks that Berlin agreed to send to Ukraine to help repel Russia’s invasion, the new defence chief said.

Germany’s decision to suspend compulsory military service in 2011 was a mistake, he added, saying he was hesitant to place a burden upon young generations but was open to discussing a new model to strengthen the relationship between citizens and the state.

Asked whether Germany would sent fighter jets to Ukraine, the next request from Kyiv after Germany approved earlier this week the delivery of Leopard 2 tanks, Pistorius said this was “ruled out”.

Fighter aircraft are much more complex systems than main battle tanks and have a completely different range and firepower. We would be venture into dimensions that I would currently warn against.

Ukraine will need an additional $17bn (£13.7bn) in financing this year for energy repairs, de-mining and to rebuild infrastructure, Reuters quotes the country’s prime minister Denys Shmyhal as saying.

He told a government meeting five high-voltage substations in the central, southern and south-west regions were hit during Russia’s air attacks on Thursday.

The energy sector has been severely damaged following four months of Russian missile and drones attacks. Shmyhal said the government hosted a meeting with western partners this week to coordinate financial support in a transparent and efficient way.

This year, we need to finance a huge budget deficit of about $38bn. Another $17bn this year will be needed for fast reconstruction of the energy, humanitarian de-mining, rebuilding of the housing, critical and social infrastructure.

The government also said it was setting up a state agency for infrastructure recovery and development. Mustafa Nayem, a prominent former journalist who had been a deputy infrastructure minister since 2021, would head the newly-created agency.

Moscow has ordered Latvia’s envoy to leave Russia within two weeks, the former’s foreign ministry has said – following a similar decision by Riga earlier this week, Reuters reports.

The ministry said it had summoned the Latvian chargé d’affaires to protest Riga’s decision to downgrade relations with Russia. Latvia has said it acted out of solidarity with Estonia after Tallinn also ordered out Russia’s envoy. The three Baltic states, which also include Lithuania, have been among a group of Nato allies arguing strongly for more western tanks to be sent to Ukraine.

A new barrage of Russian shelling has killed at least 10 Ukrainian civilians and wounded 20 others in a day, the Associated Press (AP) reports, citing the office of Ukraine’s president.

Regional officials said towns and villages in the east and in the south that are within reach of the Russian artillery suffered most. Six people died in the Donetsk region, two in Kherson, and two in the Kharkiv region, the AP quotes them as saying. A day earlier, missiles and self-propelled drones that Russian forces fired had hit deeper into Ukrainian territory, killing at least 11 people.

Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the Russian military used fiercely-burning phosphorus munitions in its shelling of the village of Zvanivka, about 12 miles (20 km) north of Bakhmut; a city that has become the focus of a gruelling standoff in recent months. The shelling also damaged apartment buildings and two schools in the nearby town of Vuhledar, Kyrylenko said.

The governor of the neighbouring Luhansk region Serhii Haidai said Ukrainian shelling hit two Russian bases in the occupied towns of Kreminna and Rubizhne, killing and wounding “dozens” of Russian soldiers. The AP said it could not independently verify his claim.

Further south, Russian troops resumed shelling the town of Nikopol, across the river Dnieper from the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, damaging apartment buildings, gas pipelines, power lines and a bakery, the AP quoted officials as saying.

27 Jan 202310.17 EST

Jennifer Rankin

A senior EU official has called for a “Radio Free Russia” to help independent Russian media distribute content in their home country and evade heavy censorship.

Vĕra Jourová, the European Commission vice-president in charge of values and transparency, said the EU had a moral duty to support democratic ideals in Russia:

We should not give up on the Russian society … regardless of how few or how many want to hear the real news, not Kremlin propaganda.

During a speech at Estonia’s foreign ministry, Jourová called for a Radio Free Russia project to support independent Russian media that have been expelled or fled their home country.

The project did not mean establishing a new radio station, she said, but supporting journalists in the EU, so they could “produce more content and distribute it more widely without any editorial interference”. She added:

We need to create the conditions for them to work and tell the story of the EU they see and experience to their Russian audiences. It is not only a moral duty, it is in our self-interest.

• Ukraine’s army claims to have killed 109 Russian soldiers and wounded a further 188 in one day during fighting around the village of Vuhledar in the eastern Donetsk oblast. Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for the eastern operational command of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the bloody death toll was recorded on Thursday, adding “Fierce fighting is ongoing. The enemy is indeed trying to achieve an intermediate success there, but thanks to the efforts of our defenders, they are unsuccessful.”

• Poland will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of the 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has already pledged, the former’s prime minister has said. Mateusz Morawiecki has told CTV News “we are ready to send 60 of our modernised tanks, 30 of them PT-91. And on top of those tanks, 14 tanks, Leopard 2 tanks, from in our possession.”

• Belgium has announced a package of an additional €93.6m (£84.5m / $104.7m) in military aid for Ukraine. The prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said that, taking into account previous spending, it amounted to the biggest ever military aid package given to another country by Belgium. The package will include surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank weapons, machine guns, grenades and munition.

• Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who visited Ukraine last week, said IAEA monitors reported powerful explosions near Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station on Thursday and renewed calls for a security zone around the plant.

• Ukraine’s state broadcaster reported that ten regions of Ukraine are using emergency power outages due to a power shortage in the network after Thursday’s Russian attacks, and the restoration of damaged facilities is ongoing.

• The Kremlin said on Friday that US President Joe Biden had the key to end the conflict in Ukraine by directing Kyiv to settle, but that Washington had so far not been willing to use it. “The key to the Kyiv regime is largely in the hands of Washington,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in his usual daily briefing. “Now we see that the current White House leader ... does not want to use this key. On the contrary, he chooses the path of further pumping weapons into Ukraine,” he added.

• Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador to Russia, will not improve ties between Washington and Moscow because the former is engaging in a “hybrid war” against the latter, the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Friday. Zakharova said Tracy’s room for manoeuvre would be limited due to what she said was fierce anti-Russian bipartisan feeling in the United States.

• The European Union wants swift accountability for “horrific” crimes in Ukraine, EU justice ministers have said. But the member states differ over how to bring prosecutions, seek evidence or fund war damage repairs. The bloc’s 27 justice ministers met in Stockholm, where they discussed collecting evidence as well as setting up a new international tribunal to prosecute Moscow’s aggression.

• Hungary will veto any European Union sanctions against Russia affecting nuclear energy, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told state radio on Friday.

• Ukrainian government officials who shirk their duties during wartime will be quickly removed, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday amid a crack down on corruption. More than a dozen officials have been removed this week after a series of scandals and graft allegations. Political analysts said Zelenskiy needs to show western partners and war-weary Ukrainians that he is serious about punishing misrule.

• Russia is violating the “fundamental principles of child protection” in wartime by giving Ukrainian children Russian passports and putting them up for adoption, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) chief Filippo Grandi has said. “Giving them nationality or having them adopted goes against the fundamental principles of child protection in situations of war,” Grandi said. Grandi said his agency was unable to estimate the number of children who had been given passports or put up for adoption, as access in Russia was extremely limited. Russia has said accusations Ukrainian children have been abducted are false.

• A 74-year-old Spanish man arrested over a spate of letter bombs sent to institutions including the prime minister’s office and the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid in late 2022 was trying to pressure Spain to drop its support for Ukraine, an investigating magistrate said on Friday. The man was remanded in custody as he was considered a flight risk to Russia.

• The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has met the Eritrean president, Isaias Afwerki, during a tour of African nations to shore up support for Russia, focusing on the “dynamics of the war in Ukraine”, Eritrea’s information minister has said.

• Ukraine would not rule out boycotting the Olympic Games if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete in the Paris 2024 Games, its sports minister said.

• Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor says it has blocked the websites of the CIA and FBI, accusing the two US government agencies of spreading false information.

Belgium has announced a package of an additional €93.6m (£84.5m/$104.7m) in military aid for Ukraine. In a press conference the prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said that, taking into account previous spending, it amounted to the biggest ever military aid package given to another country by Belgium.

VRT, the public service broadcaster for Belgium’s Flemish community reports:

Federal defence minister Ludivine Dedonder gave details about the nature of the military aid that Belgium is giving to Ukraine. This will include surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank weapons, machine guns, grenades and munition. Some of this will come from stocks held by the Belgian army, while the rest will be bought from Belgian arms manufacturers. Dedonder would not go into specific details about the quantities of arms that will be sent.

The defence minister went on to say that armoured jeeps and lorries will also be given to the Ukrainians. All of the vehicles that will be sent to Ukraine are all in working order and in a good state of repair or will soon undergo a full service.

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