New long-range weapons will not target Russia: Ukraine defence minister
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The US announced on Feb 3 a new package of arms and munitions for Ukraine worth US$2.2 billion.
PHOTO: AFP
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KYIV - Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Sunday that Kyiv would not use new long-range weapons from the West to strike targets in Russia.
“On Friday, our partners decided to provide us with weapons capable of firing at a distance of 150km.
“We always tell our partners that we take an obligation not to use the weapons of foreign partners against the territory of Russia, only against their units in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine for the purpose of de-occupying our land,” he said.
The United States on Friday announced a new US$2.2 billion (S$2.9 billion) package of arms and munitions for Ukraine,
They potentially give Kyiv’s forces the ability to strike anywhere in the Russian-occupied Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well as the northern part of occupied Crimea.
France and Italy for their part are expected to deliver mobile surface-to-air missile systems.
In an interview with the weekly Bild am Sonntag published on Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed that weapons supplied by the West would not be used to attack Russian territory.
Mr Reznikov also said Kyiv expected a possible Russian offensive later this month.
On Feb 24, the Kremlin will mark one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine.
“Not all Western weapons” will arrive by the time of a possible Russian offensive this month, Mr Reznikov said, though he added that Kyiv had the resources to respond.
“We are ready to fight back,” he said.
But he also urged Kyiv’s Western allies to send jets to Ukraine
“I am sure that we will win this war, I am sure we will liberate all the occupied territories,” Mr Reznikov told reporters.
But without the delivery of Western jets, “it will cost us more lives”.
“We have to stop it right now,” he added.
On Sunday, at least two missiles launched from Belgorod in Russia struck residential areas and a university building in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kharkiv, causing extensive damage and wounding at least five people.
This came after Ukraine said it had fought off a fresh Russian assault on the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut
“This week, the Russian occupation forces threw all their efforts into breaking through our defence and encircling Bakhmut, and launched a powerful offensive in the Lyman sector,” said Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar.
“But thanks to the resilience of our soldiers, they did not succeed,” she added.
Ukraine’s border guard service reported that its soldiers had stopped the latest attack, killing four and wounding seven of the attacking forces.
Russia unleashed a fresh wave of bombardment across the eastern front lines on Saturday morning.
Ukrainian officials reported shelling in the Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk and Mykolaiv regions.
In his evening address on Saturday, Mr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation was getting tougher.
Russia, he said, was “throwing more and more of its forces at breaking down our defence”.
“It is very difficult now in Bakhmut, Vugledar, Lyman and other areas,” he said, referring to the front-line cities in the east of the country.
On Friday, at an unprecedented summit with European Union leaders in Kyiv, the Ukraine leader promised: “No one will surrender Bakhmut.”
He added: “We will fight as long as we can.”
The more sophisticated, long-range weapons promised by its Western partners could help turn the tide of the fighting there in Ukraine’s favour, he added.
Officials in Kyiv said on Saturday that the bodies of two Britons killed while trying to help
Mr Chris Parry, 28, and Mr Andrew Bagshaw, 47, were undertaking voluntary work in Soledar, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, when their vehicle was reportedly hit by a shell.
Their bodies were returned to Ukraine authorities as part of a wider exchange, in which Kyiv got 116 prisoners and Russia 63.
“We managed to return the bodies of the dead foreign volunteers,” said President Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak, naming them as the two British men.
Concern had grown about their fates after the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, which helped capture Soledar from Ukrainian forces, said on Jan 11 that one of the missing men’s bodies had been found there.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had also published online photographs of passports that appeared to belong to Mr Parry and Mr Bagshaw, which he claimed were found with the corpses.
On Friday, news emerged of the death of an American medic killed in Bakhmut when his evacuation vehicle was hit by a missile.
Global Outreach Doctors, with whom he was working, said 33-year-old Pete Reed, was a former US Marine Corps rifleman who also worked as a paramedic.
Ukrenergo, the country’s energy operator, reported the accident at a substation supplying both the city and the region of Odesa.
The power network there had been gradually degraded by repeated Russian bombardment in recent months, it added: “As a result, the reliability of power supply in the region has decreased.”
“As of today, almost 500,000 customers have no electricity supply,” said Mr Maksym Marchenko, of the Odesa regional administration. Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko said the number came to “about a third of consumers” there.
“The situation is complex, the scale of the accident is significant,” Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said on messaging app Telegram.
Fresh embargo
On Sunday, Russia faced a fresh turn of the sanctions screw, with an embargo on ship deliveries of its refined oil products.
Already in December, the EU imposed an embargo on Russian crude oil coming into the bloc by sea and – with its Group of Seven partners – imposed a US$60 per barrel cap on Russian crude exports to other parts of the world.
The new embargo and price caps starting on Sunday will target Russian refined oil products such as petrol, diesel and heating fuel arriving on ships.
In Brussels on Friday, the EU, the G-7 industrialised nations and Australia agreed to cap the price of Moscow’s refined oil products.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen estimated last week that the crude oil price cap costs Moscow around €160 million (S$230 million) daily.
The Kremlin has warned that the measures will destabilise world markets. REUTERS, AFP
