UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has confirmed reports that the UK is donating long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Wallace said Ukrainians had “the best chance of defending themselves”.
The US ambassador to South Africa has accused the country of secretly supplying Russia with weapons – an accusation that provoked furious rebuke in Pretoria. Reuben Brigety told a media briefing that the US believed arms and ammunition had been loaded onto a Russian freighter that docked at a Cape Town naval base in December. “We are confident that arms were loaded on this ship and I would wager my life on the accuracy of this claim,” Brigety said, according to a video with the remarks. “South Africa’s arming of Russia…is fundamentally unacceptable.”
A Ukrainian brigade commander who was fighting in the ruins of Bakhmut said Russian mercenary forces had stepped up shelling and artillery attacks in recent days and despite claims to the contrary by their boss, there was no shortage of ammunition. Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said Thursday that the situation on the flanks near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was developing in line with the “worst of all expected scenarios”.
Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak confirmed in December that the army was aware of a possible missile heading towards the country but failed to inform the government. Poland has been wary of a possible spillover of arms from the war to neighboring Ukraine, particularly since two people near the border were killed by a misfired Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile last November, Warsaw suspected.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country needed more time to prepare for the much-anticipated spring counter-offensive. say, “We can move forward and be successful.” But we would lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we have to wait. We still need some time.”
Zelenskyy again denied any Ukrainian responsibility for the drone incident over the Kremlin. Russia has accused Washington and Kiev of masterminding what it described as the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time and there were no injuries from the drones.
A Ukrainian drone has attacked an oil storage facility in the Russian border region of Bryansk. The local governor said so in a post on his Telegram channel on Thursday. There were no casualties after the attack on the plant near the town of Klintsy, owned by Russian oil company Rosneft, although a storage tank was partially damaged, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov claimed that seven settlements in the Russian region remained without electricity after Ukrainian shelling over the border.