Russia threatens 'military response' after UK gives long-range missiles to Ukraine Politics News

The UK has been threatened with a "military response" by Russia after pledging to send long-range missiles to Ukraine. He also wants Nato to abandon military exercises and stop sending weapons to eastern Europe, seeing this as a direct threat to Russia's security. Russia has denied it is planning any attack but Mr Putin has issued demands to the West, including that Ukraine be prevented from joining the Nato military alliance.

• If the US abandons the military alliance, it will fall to European countries to ensure a Ukrainian victory, Mr OBrien says.
• “We currently don’t have evidence that there could have been that many people onboard the aircraft,” Budanov said.
• President Biden's virtual meeting with President Putin earlier this week was a start and will be followed up by more talks with other Nato members.
• Calls have recently come from senior figures on both sides of the Atlantic for the UK to be prepared in case of a potential war between Nato forces and Russia.
• The European Commission has proposed to provide Ukraine with €50bn ($55bn), with 26 of the 27 nation bloc’s leaders endorsing this plan at a summit before that last payout.
• That means using different kinds of missiles - hypersonic, cruise, and ballistic - but also firing these missiles along different routes.

A Russian team shot and killed a brother and sister from the Khotin community of the Sumy oblast this morning, the regional military administration said. In its latest intelligence report, the UK Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian counter-attacks were holding Russians back from taking full control of Avdiivka. Since its illegal and unprovoked attack, over 300,000 Russian personnel have been killed or wounded. Media organisations have been shut down, and many journalists are now in Russian prisons. He was not making a case for conscription or for an imminent call up of volunteers.

How will the UK respond to the Ukrainian invasion?

Russia wants Nato to make a legally binding promise that Ukraine will never become a member. It also wants Nato to withdraw its forces from most Eastern European countries. It is called self-determination, and perhaps the most important aspect of this principle is that borders cannot be changed by invading armies. The memorandum is not a treaty and lawyers dispute whether  it is legally enforceable. But it is a formal, public and written commitment by the UK to support Ukraine. This was in return for Ukraine giving up its massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, a legacy of its membership of the Soviet Union.

Joe Biden will host the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at the White House on 9 February to discuss aid to Ukraine. This comes as the US president has been pressing Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with aid for Ukraine. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid.

What about Putin’s international partners?

But Air Vice Marshal Bell, who previously headed a strategic combat review for the RAF, says the reasons for this are not clear. For years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the belief was that Western armed  forces would only ever have to take part in what was known as 'expeditionary' wars. These are conflicts involving a strong military force going into a situation in which it has superiority, so it can win easily - for example the Gulf and Iraq wars and conflicts in Sierra Leone and Kosovo.

• Analysis published in Le Monde quotes Ukrainian officials who said Russia still has in its stockpile around 1,000 ballistic or cruise missiles, and is able to make around 100 more per month - such as Kalibrs and Kh-101s.
• "We divided our systems for different types of threats," he says, though of course this means relying on the West for ammunition and maintenance.
• The UK's Ministry of Defence said Russian forces based in Belarus were advancing towards Ukraine's capital Kyiv.
• While Covid was a useful exercise in Armageddon planning, 21st-century Britain is arguably less ready for actual warfare than it was even 30 years ago.

There has also been pressure from opposition parties for Ofcom to strip Kremlin-backed TV channel RT of its broadcasting license. German authorities made a similar step earlier this month, but Moscow would likely retaliate by expelling UK journalists from Russia. And the more aggressive action taken by Russia and the more sanctions put in place in response by the West, the less likely diplomacy is to succeed.

The latest repatriation of bodies appears unrelated to the downing of the plane, which crashed in Russia’s western Belgorod region on Wednesday. They engaged Ukrainian troops in 98 combat engagements, and carried out four air strikes and 78 shellings with reactive bullets. Russian forces struck the settlement of Maly Burluk on 17 January with an aerial bomb, Synegubov said. Downing Street has ruled out any move towards conscription, saying the army service will remain voluntary. They said Moscow did not ask for any specific stretch of airspace to be kept safe for a certain length of time, as it has for past prisoner exchanges.

• NATO believed the main threat to Western Europe came from advancing Soviet tanks and developed equipment to use against them on the battlefield.
• Unfortunately for the Russians, it was clear they hadn't planned sufficiently well to undertake an effective invasion, and the forces operating their equipment were not well enough trained to adapt when things went wrong.
• They include Mykola Azarov, who served as prime minister under the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in 2014.
• Here, according to former Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) head Professor Michael Clarke and retired Air Vice Marshal Sean Bell, are a few of the lessons the MoD will be taking on board.

Your parents are likely to pay even more for gas and electricity because of this crisis. Ukraine uses German-made Gepard anti-aircraft guns to tackle incoming drones, while Soviet-era Buk systems are used against cruise missiles and US-made Patriots against hypersonic Kinzhal missiles. Ukraine's intelligence service, the SBU, reported on Tuesday it had found and deactivated "two robotic online surveillance cameras" that it says were hacked by Russia to spy on Kyiv's defences and scout out targets. Since launching its invasion Russia has never stopped attacking Ukraine by the air, but this latest series of strikes marks a deadly escalation. Nearly  https://euronewstop.co.uk/when-did-ukraine-become-independent.html  have been killed nationwide, with Kharkiv in the northeast, Zaporizhzhia in the south, Odesa on the southern coast and even Lviv in the far west all suffering strikes. Further east in Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donetsk region, the BBC's Eastern European Correspondent Sarah Rainsford said people did not expect such a full-on assault.

• Until now, Putin has avoided mobilising the Russian public for battle by describing his invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation”.
• A 13-year-old girl died today from injuries sustained in the Russian shelling of her village in the Kharkiv oblast earlier this month, said Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional state administration.
• Instead, the president still blames all of Russia’s problems on the West, claiming it wants “the disintegration” of the country.

But without political support, the mindset of a country that does not feel like it is about to go to war is unlikely to change. Germany's Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, recently told a German newspaper "we have to take into account that Vladimir Putin might even attack a Nato country one day". While he said such an attack is unlikely now, "our experts expect a period of five to eight years in which this could be possible". The prospect of further UK sanctions against Russia comes a day after the prime minister announced that five Russian banks had had their assets frozen and three Russian billionaires would have travel bans imposed. Mr Johnson said the UK and its allies would agree a "massive package of economic sanctions" in a bid to "hobble" the Russian economy, warning that the West would need to cease its dependence on Russian oil and gas.

But far-fetched as they might sound, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of Britain’s army, believes it is time we dwelt on them more. The Netherlands has joined the IT coalition to aid Ukraine in its war efforts, Ukraine’s defence ministry said today. A 13-year-old girl died today from injuries sustained in the Russian shelling of her village in the Kharkiv oblast earlier this month, said Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional state administration.