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Morning Headlines
POLITICO: The EU “will lose” Serbia to China unless it lets the country join the bloc soon, and should do so before admitting Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a wide-ranging interview to be published later this week.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine's Western allies must commit to victory over Russia and not fall into "traps" laid by the Kremlin, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in a Feb. 11 interview with the Austrian news outlet Der Standard.
Reuters: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview published on Sunday that his country was not Russia' ally in its war against Ukraine, but stressed its military cooperation projects were not directed against any single country.
CNBC: Wagner Group has been replaced by a new entity known as Russia’s Africa Corps across its key strongholds in the continent, its new leader has confirmed.
ISW: Russian forces appear to have constructed a 30-kilometer-long barrier dubbed the “tsar train” in occupied Donetsk Oblast, possibly to serve as a defensive line against future Ukrainian assaults.
The Kyiv Independent: Seventeen-year-old basketball player Volodymyr Yermakov was killed in a street attack in Dusseldorf, Germany, the Kyiv Basketball Federation reported Feb. 11.
11.02.2024
AFP: US President Joe Biden slammed as "appalling and dangerous" comments by Donald Trump downplaying US commitments to NATO, warning Sunday that the former president intends to give Putin "a greenlight for more war and violence."
Reuters: A narrowly divided U.S. Senate moved closer to passing a $95.34 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Sunday, showing undiminished bipartisanship despite opposition from Republican hardliners and Donald Trump.
Reuters: Alexander Stubb of the centre-right National Coalition Party narrowly won Finland's presidential election on Sunday, defeating liberal Green Party member Pekka Haavisto, who conceded defeat. Stubb is pro-European and a strong supporter of Ukraine who has taken a tough stance towards Russia.
Ukrainska Pravda: French President Emmanuel Macron has postponed his visit to Ukraine, which was originally planned for 13-14 February.
Meduza: Russia has launched a propaganda campaign to discredit the new Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, according to Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation.
The Moscow Times spoke to military analysts for a look at the current situation in Avdiivka and other key frontline areas.
Kyodo News: Japan will pledge 15.8 billion yen ($106 million) in aid to support the reconstruction of Ukraine from war damage in seven fields such as infrastructure rebuilding and demining.
Reuters: Russian forces in occupied Ukraine are using Starlink terminals produced by Elon Musk's SpaceX for satellite internet in what is beginning to look like their "systemic" application, Kyiv's main military intelligence agency said on Sunday.
Reuters: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appointed Oleksandr Pavliuk, former first deputy defence minister, as the new commander of Ukraine's ground forces, according to a decree published on Sunday.
10.02.2024
Reuters: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced five senior military appointments on Saturday, filling out a rebooted team after he named Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi this week as the new armed forces chief.
RFI: Ahead of a key meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels and the second anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, Jens Stoltenberg insisted that "we need to reconstitute and expand our industrial base faster, to increase deliveries to Ukraine and refill our own stocks."
RFE/RL: The European Union is preparing to sanction military and tech firms from China, Kazakhstan, Serbia, and other countries helping Russia’s war effort, according to a document seen by RFE/RL, as the bloc steps up efforts to curtail evasion.
Ukrainska Pravda: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico backs the idea of letting Russian athletes compete in the Olympics.
The Kyiv Independent: Turkish F-16 fighter jets stationed in Romania were scrambled after Russian drone strikes on Odesa Oblast in the early morning of Feb. 10, Romania's Defense Ministry said.
Reuters: A Ukrainian prosecutor, her husband, and their three small children were among seven people killed after a Russian drone attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv hit an oil depot, triggering blazes that burned half a street to the ground, officials said on Saturday.
RFE/RL: After weeks of quiet deliberation, Moldova's pro-European government has rejected a Russian request for polling stations in the separatist sliver of Moldovan territory between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border during voting next month to formalize Putin's presidential reelection.
ISW continues to assess that the collapse of Western aid to Ukraine would likely lead to the eventual collapse of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and hold off the Russian military and could allow Russian forces to push all the way to western Ukraine closer to the borders of NATO member states.
09.02.2024
Reuters: U.S. President Joe Biden said Congress would be guilty of "close to criminal neglect" if it failed to pass funding for Ukraine and thanked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday for his leadership in securing German military aid for Kyiv.
AP News: Ukraine’s new military chief signaled Friday that he wants to build new momentum, saying his immediate goals are to improve troop rotation at the front lines and harness the power of new technology, at a time when Kyiv’s forces are largely on the defensive in the war with Russia.
Euronews: Farmers in Hungary and Poland protested along border crossings with Ukraine on Friday, voicing their anger against duty-free imports of Ukrainian agricultural produce.
Reuters: Ukraine accused Russia on Friday of using toxic chemicals in more than 200 attacks on the battlefield in January alone, a sharp increase in what it said were recorded instances of their use by Russian forces since they invaded two years ago.
ISW Special Report: The Kremlin's occupation playbook: coerced russification and ethnic cleansing in occupied Ukraine.
Yle: Finland is sending its 22nd military aid package to Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence announced on Friday. In a press release, the ministry said the package would cost Finland around 190 million euros.
Norway announced on Feb. 9 that it had asked the parliament to deliver an additional 10 Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) air defense launchers and four fire control centers to Ukraine.
Reuters: Ukrainian drones attacked two oil refineries in southern Russia's Krasnodar region on Friday, causing a large fire at the Ilsky refinery during operations conducted by the SBU security service, a Ukrainian source told Reuters.
Meduza: In an interview, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov stated that there were no Ukrainian prisoners of war on board the Russian military Il-76 plane that crashed near Belgorod on Jan. 24.
Reuters: Denmark should speed up its military investments after new intelligence indicates that Russia is rearming faster than expected and that it could attack a NATO country within three to five years, the Danish defence minister said on Friday.
The Insider: Despite the EU's 2014 ban on small arms sales, a flood of rifles, pistols, and cartridges from Germany, Finland, and Italy is still making its way into Russia.
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