Quebecers will need to wrap up warm to brave a bad cold hitting the province on Friday and Saturday.

Cold weather is likely to lead to the formation of snow squalls in Abitibi-Témiscamingue on Thursday before continuing south and central in the province and affecting the entire St. Lawrence River Valley.

In addition to the extreme cold alert, Environment Canada has issued a smog warning that will affect most of Quebec by Wednesday morning, causing poor air quality, particularly in major cities.

The passage of the cold front due to an arctic air mass will cause mercury to drop sharply from Thursday night to hit miserable levels on Friday and Saturday with temperatures of -22C and a feeling of -35C in the southern areas.

This polar cold will be accompanied by sunny weather, after a variable day on Thursday with clouds and intermittent snowfall, the federal agency forecast.

In the meantime, a fine day with alternating sun and clouds, even sunny weather awaits us on Wednesday, with seasonal temperatures, especially in Quebec and Montreal where it will be -9°C.

Ukraine today warned that Russia is preparing for a “maximum escalation” of the war as Kyiv prepares for Moscow’s much-anticipated three-pronged offensive in the spring.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Vladimir Putin may be planning another simultaneous attack on the country from the north, south and east on February 24 to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the war.

Danilov warned that the bloodiest battles “are yet to come” and will take place in the next few months, at a “decisive” moment in the war.

He told Sky News: “Russia is preparing for maximum escalation. It collects all sorts of things, does exercises and trains.

Oleksiy Danilov (pictured), secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Vladimir Putin may be planning another simultaneous attack on the country from the north, south and east on February 24 to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the war

Ukrainian soldiers adjust a 60mm mortar barrel near the front line in the Donetsk region on Tuesday

Ukrainian soldier Myroslav, 23, walks in a trench near a frontline position in the Donetsk region on Tuesday

“As for an offensive from different directions, I can say for now that we are not ruling out any scenario in the next two to three weeks.”

Russia is expected to have launched a full-scale attack, ordering troops south of Belarus, north of Crimea and east of Donbas to encircle and strangle Kyiv forces.

Danilov said Putin could launch his three-pronged offensive against Ukraine on the anniversary of the war on February 24. “We understand that everything is on the table,” he said.

Speaking on whether the worst is yet to come on the battlefield, Danilov said: “Of course we’ve been through a very difficult time, but I’m aware that the main battles are still ahead and they will happen within two to three this year Months.

“These will be decisive months of the war. We have our own plans and they are clear to us. They are not hidden from our main partners.’

His comments came after Ukraine’s top general Valery Zaluzhny told The Economist last month Russia was preparing 200,000 fresh troops for a major offensive that could come from the east, south or even Belarus in the spring.

Russian Army soldiers practice at a military training ground in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday

While Germany, the US and other western nations including the UK have announced plans to send fourth-generation main battle tanks to Ukraine, they will take months to arrive.

The process could even leave Ukraine stranded without the high-tech weapons until Moscow orders its much-anticipated three-pronged spring offensive.

The US doesn’t even have a ready stock of M1 Abrams tanks for delivery yet and needs to procure part of its fleet, while German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said its Leopard 2 tanks won’t be ready until late March or early April.

Military analysts say more aid is crucial if Ukraine is to block an expected Russian spring offensive and mount its own efforts to push back Russian forces.

But Danilov is sure that Ukraine will win the war. “We will definitely win because we have the support of the whole world behind us,” he said.

Meanwhile, one of Russia’s top spies predicted on Wednesday that the NATO military alliance would not inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow despite sending billions of dollars worth of arms and military equipment to Ukraine.

Sergei Naryshkin, who heads Russia’s foreign intelligence agency SVR and is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, accused NATO of upping the ante in the conflict by supplying Kyiv with more advanced weapons.

“NATO is upping the ante because it still dreams of a strategic defeat over Russia,” Naryshkin said in a television interview with the state news agency RIA, released on Wednesday. ‘But that’s not going to happen’.

His comments come as the United States prepares its latest military aid package to Ukraine, worth around $2 billion.

For the first time, the scope of supply includes missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometers.

Washington has previously been reluctant to supply Kyiv with such long-range weapons, apparently for fear they could be used in attacks on Russia itself, which could bring Moscow and NATO closer to the brink of direct conflict.

Naryshkin criticized Washington’s recent pledges of military aid, saying Moscow has “taken note of the expansion in both the volume and range of military equipment supplied.”

He said the United States and its allies are “determined to wage war with Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

Following promises by the United States, Germany and several other European countries to supply dozens of tanks to Ukraine, Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov have accused NATO allies of taking a more active role in the war.

Kyiv and the West say military stockpiles are vital to helping Ukraine defend itself against an illegal war of aggression being waged by Russia, which deployed tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine last February, which it did referred to as a “special military operation” .’

Meanwhile, Russian forces on the front lines are making incremental advances in their push to seize territory in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, focusing on the town of Bakhmut, north of the region’s capital.

But the Ukrainian army today released footage of its troops launching an artillery attack on a Russian command post and ammunition depot near Bakhmut.

The Ukrainian military tweeted: “The gunners of the 28th brigade, together with the aerial reconnaissance of the 4th brigade of the National Guard, destroyed the occupier’s command post and ammunition depot.”

Having finally convinced NATO countries to supply the modern battle tanks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government is now pushing hard for some of Ukraine’s neighbors and western allies to supply fighter jets.

A Russian army soldier fired during a training session at a military training ground in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region on Tuesday, as an instructor stood nearby

In Paris, after meeting with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said there was no taboo on supplying Kyiv with fighter jets.

The United States and Britain have so far rejected the idea, but have reiterated their willingness to continue supporting Ukraine militarily.

The West has so far refused to send weapons that could be used in attacks deep within Russia for fear of sparking a wider conflict, although Moscow has denounced the West’s recent arms pledges as provocations.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut came under renewed fire, as did Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka, villages at the southern approaches to the city, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement Tuesday evening.

Bakhmut has suffered months of relentless bombardment as Russian forces resorted to the same destructive tactics they used in June and July to capture two cities further north – Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Russian forces on Tuesday made no progress in their attempts to advance on Avdiivka, the second focal point of Russian attacks in the Donetsk region, the Kyiv military general staff said.

Russian forces were also attempting to advance near Lyman, a town further north in the Donetsk region that was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in October, the military said.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said on YouTube that Russian forces in the region are regrouping, bringing conscripts into what he calls a “transmitter of death.”

“We inflict as much damage as possible and they are forced to deploy new forces to keep up the constant attacks on our troops,” he said.

“Conscripts cannot keep up the pace of previous attacks… Their physical abilities are not up to the task and their motivation is much weaker.”

Russia pushed further west in Donetsk by shelling the town of Vuhledar and half a dozen other towns and villages, the Ukrainian military said. Vuhledar is about 148 km (90 miles) southeast of the main battles in and around Bakhmut.

Britain’s MoD said the Russian force in the new Vuhledar attack is at least the size of a brigade, a unit typically made up of several thousand soldiers.

In the neighboring Luhansk region, a planned Ukrainian advance has slowed and an attack to liberate the town of Svatovo has been delayed due to bad weather, the sector’s military commander Yuri Federenko told Espreso TV.

Wagner mercenaries and “special forces in Ukrainian uniforms” who could speak Ukrainian are active in the area, he said.

London CNN —

Up to half a million workers are on strike across Britain on Wednesday, closing schools, canceling university lectures and bringing most of the rail network to a standstill in what unions say will be the biggest single day of strikes in more than a decade.

Teachers, university staff, train drivers and civil servants – including staff checking passports at airports – are striking in large numbers over pay and working conditions as living standards continue to fall after years of sub-inflation rises.

At the same time, the Trades Union Congress, representing 48 unions, is holding over 75 rallies across the UK to protest a government bill it says is an “assault” on the right to strike. The law provides that in the fire, ambulance and rail sectors, basic levels of service must be maintained in the event of strikes.

The escalation in strikes comes just weeks after the government tried to settle wage disputes in a bid to end the worst wave of industrial unrest the country has seen in decades. Many public sector workers have been offered pay rises of 4% or 5% for the current fiscal year, with annual inflation at 10.5%.

Up to 300,000 Teachers are expected to go on strike on Wednesday, marking the first of seven days of strikes in February and March by the National Education Union, the sector’s largest union. Strikes will affect around 23,400 schools, around 85%, in England and Wales, with many closing in whole or in part.

Wednesday also marks the start of strikes by 70,000 members of the University and College Union (UCU) which will hit 150 UK universities and affect 2.5 million students over 18 days in February and March.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents civil servants, will go on strike in 123 departments and agencies over pay, pensions and job security.

Only around 30% of train traffic is expected to operate in the UK on Wednesday, according to British railway company Rail Delivery Group, which issued a statement on its website warning that the disruption could stretch into the rest of the week as many trains are not running be real depots.

The strikes will weigh on already slowing economic growth. The UK is likely to be the only major economy to slip into recession this year after posting one of the strongest growth rates among advanced economies last year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF has slightly raised its forecast for global growth on the back of China’s reopening and an improvement in financial conditions amid a gradual decline in inflation.

However, the Fund has become more somber on the UK.

Research director Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said this was due to higher energy prices, lower productivity due to employment not recovering to pre-pandemic levels, and increased inflation leading to higher interest rates and mortgage costs.

The IMF expects UK inflation to remain above 8% this year, compared with 4.6% in advanced economies and 6.6% globally. The UK economy will contract by 0.6% in 2023, a 0.9 percentage point downgrade from its October forecast.

An economic slowdown and persistent inflation will exacerbate a cost-of-living crisis affecting thousands of workers as wages fail to keep pace with soaring prices.

The average 5% salary increase for teachers this year is inadequate, especially as it follows a decade of “wage erosion” leading to a “crisis of recruitment and retention,” Niamh Sweeny, deputy secretary general of NEU, told CNN.

According to the union, senior teachers’ salaries have fallen 23% since 2010, when inflation is factored in. According to Sweeny, real-world salaries for support workers like teaching assistants have fallen by 27%, and some can make more at their local supermarket than they can in education.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Education replied: “Strike action is extremely damaging to children’s education, especially after the disruption children have experienced in the past two years.”

Sian Elliott, a senior policy officer at the Trades Union Congress, told CNN that the solution to the strike wave was simple: “All that is needed to settle the current dispute is to offer an improved wage deal.”

But instead of resolving pay disputes, the government has “rushed” through parliament an anti-strike bill without proper scrutiny or impact assessment, she added.

Britain’s firefighters voted to go on strike for the first time since 2003, in a sign that labor unrest could escalate further. The Fire Brigades Union has given the government until February 9 to come up with an improved salary offer.

Nurses and ambulance drivers will start a new wave of strikes next week.

— Olesya Dmitracova contributed to the coverage.