Russia-Ukraine updates: US to expand training of Ukrainian forces

The US military will be expanding its training of Ukrainian military personnel in Germany, the Pentagon has said, including training in combined arms.

Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said the new training will involve approximately 500 Ukrainians per month and will not require an increase in US troop deployments to Europe.

The commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces expects a new Russian attack on Kyiv in the early months of 2023, according to an interview with The Economist released today.

Much of the fighting has been concentrated in Ukraine’s east and south recently, but General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said that the capital would be targeted again.

“A very important strategic task is to create reserves and prepare for the war which may take place in February – at best in March, and at worst, at the end of January,” he said.

“The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops. I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv,” he said in the interview. “We have made all the calculations – how many tanks, artillery we need, and so on and so on.”

“I know that I can beat this enemy,” the general continued. “But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles] 500 Howitzers.”

Ukraine’s Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov has told a military briefing that although he does not expect Moscow to launch an attack from Belarus, Russia is training new troops on its neighbour’s soil and has moved military aircraft there.

“The Kremlin … is seeking to turn the conflict into a prolonged armed confrontation,” Gromov said.

Deputy Minister of Defence Hanna Malyar, at the same briefing, warned against allowing complacency to set in after recent Russian military setbacks.

“We and the world should not relax, because the ultimate goal of the Russian Federation is to conquer all of Ukraine, and then it can move on,” said Malyar.

The US has imposed a new round of financial penalties on people and entities involved in Russia’s financial sector, with the targets including one of the country’s richest men, Vladimir Potanin.

Potanin had served as Russia’s deputy prime minister. He, his wife, adult children and a yacht named Nirvana were designated for sanctions, as well as Rosbank, a Russia-based commercial bank Potanin acquired in 2022.

The US treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also imposed sanctions on more than 40 people linked to the Russian financial sector and 17 subsidiaries of Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB Bank Public Joint Stock Company, also known as VTB Bank. VTB Bank was designated for sanctions in February.

“By sanctioning additional major Russian banks, we continue to deepen Russia’s isolation from global markets,” said Brian Nelson, the US treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

“Today’s designations by the United States, together with actions taken by our international partners, will further inhibit the Putin regime’s ability to fund its horrific war against Ukraine.”

More than 14 million tonnes of grain have been exported from Ukraine under the Black Sea deal with Russia, easing global food prices, the United Nations has said.

Rebeca Grynspan, head of the UN’s trade and development agency UNCTAD, which helped broker the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), said it had reduced world food prices for seven straight months.

“We have surpassed 14 million tonnes of food that has come out through the Black Sea Grain Initiative,” Grynspan said in Geneva.

“The volumes that we are talking about are very significant for the market.”

Poland has withdrawn its objections to a minimum corporate tax, unblocking an 18-billion-euro ($19.16bn) aid package to Ukraine for 2023, European Union diplomats said.

Leaders had been held up on several fronts at the final Brussels summit of the year.

Diplomats said Poland had blindsided peers who did not expect its objection to the package but Warsaw’s veto had now been dropped.

“There is a deal,” one diplomat said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed leaders by video link and urged them to approve the aid his country needs nearly 10 months into the war.

“I am asking you very much to ensure that our struggle for peace for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe does not depend on misunderstandings and controversies between some EU member states,” he said.

Click here for a roundup of the war’s key events from day 295.

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As EU leaders continue to decide on a price cap to limit Russia’s ability to fund the war, how much impact will it have?

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story speaks to experts on the anticipated price cap.

Germany’s Schwedt refinery will no longer need Russian oil after Poland committed to providing enough supply for it to run at 70 percent capacity from January, an economy ministry official in Berlin said.

Berlin aims to eliminate Russian oil imports by the end of the year and has been working with Poland to try to secure a supply for Schwedt, which provides 90 percent of Berlin’s fuel.

Both sides want to ensure Polish refineries in Gdansk and Plock, and German refineries in Schwedt and Leuna near Leipzig are adequately supplied with crude oil, ministers from both countries said earlier this month.

“Poland wants to take this step together with us,” said Michael Kellner, state secretary in Germany’s economy ministry.

“Security of supply can be ensured,” he told parliament, “so we guarantee that work can continue in Schwedt”.

Poland is holding up efforts to ratify an EU deal on a minimum corporate tax and to send 18 billion euros ($19bn) of aid to Ukraine, diplomats said.

The 27 member states struck a complex agreement on Monday that gave the green light to the aid and a minimum 15 percent global corporate tax rate.

But repeated deadlines to ratify the package slipped by after Warsaw raised objections to the tax push.

Discussions about the deal spilt over to the EU’s final summit of the year in Brussels.

Poland insisted it was not opposed to 2023 financial aid to Kyiv but Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said it was “blackmail” for other countries to maintain the money for Ukraine could only be agreed if the corporate tax deal went through.

The International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the Games had a unifying mission when he spoke with Zelenskyy, who called for a ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy said after a call with Bach that he opposed the idea of Russian athletes taking part under any neutral banner at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, as “all their flags are stained in blood”.

With the IOC edging towards including Russian and Belarus athletes at the 2024 Games as neutrals, Bach told Zelenskyy the Olympics were not about exclusion.

“In the call, the Ukrainian President requested the full isolation of Russia and Russians from the world community,” the IOC said in a statement.

“From his point of view, this must also apply to athletes.

“In this context, the IOC President explained the unifying mission of the IOC and the Olympic Games enshrined in the Olympic Charter.

“At the end of this open and constructive discussion, both presidents agreed to stay in contact”.

A Polish police commander received an exploding gift during a recent visit to Ukraine, the Polish interior ministry said.

The gift exploded at police headquarters in Warsaw, causing the commander and a civilian employee to suffer minor injuries.

The explosion occurred on Wednesday at 7:50am (06:50 GMT), the ministry said.

It did not specify what object the Polish commander received as a present during the working visit to Ukraine.

The commander met leaders of the Ukrainian Police and Emergency Situations Service on Sunday and Monday, the ministry said.

Following the explosion, “the Polish side has asked the Ukrainian side to provide relevant explanations”, it said.

It added that the police commander has been in a hospital since Wednesday for observation, while the civilian employee did not require hospitalisation.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk says further attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure could lead to severe humanitarian deterioration and displacement.

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure have left millions without heat, clean water or electricity as temperatures plummet. About 18 million people now rely on humanitarian aid.

In a speech to the UN’s Human Rights Council following a trip to Ukraine last week, Turk said Russian attacks have exposed millions of people to “extreme hardship”.

“Additional strikes could lead to a further serious deterioration in the humanitarian situation and spark more displacement,” he said.

He added that the war is an “unmitigated tragedy and disaster”.

Moscow says the raids do not target civilians but are meant to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight and push it to negotiate.

Kyiv says the attacks are a war crime.

As the 42nd week of the war closes, Russian forces continue to attack the front line in Donetsk and Kherson, and more Western allies pledge financial and military aid to Ukraine.

Read everything that happened this week here.

Putin says Russia will expand trade with new partners, including switching gas flows to eastern neighbours.

In a televised speech, the president said Russia would develop its economic relations with partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“We will remove restrictions in logistics and finance. Let me remind you that by introducing sanctions, Western countries were trying to push Russia to the periphery of world development. But we will never take the route of self-isolation,” he said.

“On the contrary, we are broadening, and will broaden, cooperation with all who have an interest in that.”

Putin said Russia would increase gas sales to the east and reiterated his plan to build a new “gas hub” in Turkey.

He said Russia would define prices for gas sales to Europe using an “electronic platform”.

However, Russia’s economy is expected to shrink by 2.5 percent in 2022, Putin said.

Here are four maps we update daily, charting the latest war developments.

The European Parliament approves a resolution declaring the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine a “genocide”.

The text said the EU legislature “recognises the Holodomor, the artificial famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine caused by a deliberate policy of the Soviet regime, as a genocide against the Ukrainian people”.

Zelenskyy celebrated the acknowledgement on Twitter, saying: “I commend the European Parliament’s recognition of the Holodomor as genocide of the people. Grateful to the President, MEPs & all of the united Europe for this important & fair decision. I hope for further recognition of the Holodomor as genocide by all civilised countries of the world.”

I commend the @Europarl_EN recognition of the Holodomor as genocide of the 🇺🇦 people. Grateful to the @EP_President, MEPs & all of united Europe for this important & fair decision. I hope for further recognition of the Holodomor as genocide by all civilized countries of the world

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 15, 2022

The Vatican launches a crowdfunding campaign to send thermal underwear to Ukraine to help residents survive the winter amid power shortages.

The Vatican’s charity office said in a statement it had linked up with the Italian crowdfunding site eppela.com to raise money to buy the clothing.

The head of the office, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, said Italian companies had already responded to an earlier appeal by donating thermal underwear or providing it at cost.

Krajewski, a Pole based in Rome who has carried out several charity missions to Ukraine for Pope Francis this year, said he would personally take the clothing to the country in a convoy of trucks.

Russian shelling killed two people in the recently liberated city of Kherson, a senior Ukrainian official said.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said on Telegram: “The enemy hit the city centre again. 100 meters [328 feet] from the Kherson OVA building, which was attacked yesterday. There is information about two dead people”.

Tymoshenko added that Kherson was now “completely without power” after heavy shelling of a critical infrastructure facility in the Ship district.

As Patriot air defence systems become the talking point of the conflict, what exactly is the weapons system that Ukraine wants so badly?

The US-made defence system is one of the most coveted shield weapons that can target aircraft, cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles.

Patriots have been bought by a number of countries including the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Romania, Sweden, Poland and several others.

Despite the concerns that granting the system would provoke Russia, or risk that a missile fired could end up hitting inside Russia, the pleadings of Ukrainian officials and the destruction of the country’s crucial infrastructure overcame the US reservations about supplying the Patriots.

Read more on the coveted and controversial air defence system here.