Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow warns west will ‘regret’ sending military aid as Zelenskiy pleads with Germany and allies to send tanks | Ukraine
Zelenskiy pleads with Germany and allies to send tanks to Ukraine
Ukraine’s president has pleaded with Germany and western allies to send their battle tanks to Kyiv, amid speculation that Berlin would allow German-made Leopard 2s to be re-exported by other countries but not necessarily send any of its own stock.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking via video link at the opening of a meeting of Ukraine-supporting defence ministers from 50 countries in Ramstein, Germany, said it was “in your power” to at least make a decision in principle to send tanks.

Urgent action was necessary, the Ukrainian leader said, because “Russia is concentrating its forces, last forces, trying to convince everyone that hatred can be stronger than the world”.
It was necessary to speed up weapons supplies, Zelenskiy said, because the war with Russia amounted to a battle between freedom and autocracy.
It is about what kind of world people will live in, people who dream, love and hope.
Key events
Leopard 2 tanks: what are they and why does Ukraine want them?

Peter Beaumont
What is the Leopard 2?
The Leopard 2 is a German-manufactured main battle tank with a range of about 500km (311 miles). It first came into service in 1979 and has a top speed of 68km/h (42 mph). Equipped with a 120mm smooth bore gun as its main armament, it is also armed with two coaxial light machine guns.
As well as being used by the German military, Leopard 2 has been in wide service in Europe, with more than a dozen countries using the tank, as well as a number of other countries including Canada. The tanks have been deployed in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Syria (by Turkey) where several were lost to anti-tank missiles.

Why does Ukraine want them?
Ukraine has said it has an urgent need for heavier armour in its war against Russia’s invasion. Kyiv has limited availability of tanks, most of them from the Soviet or post-Soviet era.
As well as emphasising its belief that Moscow intends to launch a significant new offensive in the coming months, Kyiv and many of its allies believe that the war will end more quickly if Russia is defeated on the battlefield in Ukraine’s own counter-offensives to take back Russian occupied territory.
While Ukraine has won significant victories – in the battle for Kyiv at the begging of the war as well as in Kharkiv oblast and around Kherson in the south – it is hampered by a shortage of tanks to support its operations and faced by Russian forces increasingly fielding more modern and capable T-90s.
The widespread availability of Leopards – including in neighbouring Poland, which wants to supply them to Ukraine – makes them a good fit for Kyiv.
Ukraine has suggested it needs 300 tanks, while western analysts have suggested that 100 could probably shift the balance of the war.
So what is the problem?
Because the tanks were supplied to countries under export licenses, Germany can veto re-export, although Poland suggested on Thursday it could simply ignore Germany and export its Leopards regardless.
Germany’s own position has been conflicted. It prefers a multilateral approach on arms supply to Ukraine rather than being seen to be moving unilaterally.
Although Germany has supplied a large amount of equipment to Ukraine, including armoured cars, it has also been wrestling with its post-second world war tradition of anti-militarism. The supply of main battle tanks had been seen as problematic because of their much more obviously offensive capabilities.
Germany had tried to tie the supply of Leopards to a wider coalition that would supply other tanks, including US Abrams – a tank viewed by experts as being less suitable for the war in Ukraine because of its heavy consumption of fuel.
What is the argument against supplying the tanks?
Opponents believe that the supply of tanks would be an escalation of the involvement of Nato countries in the war, heightening the risk of the war spreading. Ukraine has said it would only use the tanks within its internationally recognised borders, while supporters say that it is Moscow that has continued to escalate the conflict, mobilising ever more troops, targeting civilian infrastructure and making veiled threats of nuclear strikes.
The family of a Tanzanian man who was killed fighting with the private Russian mercenary Wagner Group in Ukraine say they had warned him against joining the group.
Nemes Tarimo, 33, had been studying at a Moscow university but was subsequently imprisoned for what were described as drug-related offences.
His family told the BBC they warned him against joining Russian mercenaries last October. “Nemes informed me and some other family members about joining Wagner, and we advised him not to,” a family member said.
“He said he would join to free himself,” the relative said. Tarimo’s family has learned that he died at the end of October while on a combat mission in Ukraine with Wagner.
No decision yet on sending tanks to Ukraine, says German defence minister

Kate Connolly
Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius has said in the last few minutes on the sidelines of the Ramstein meeting that there has been no decision made yet on whether Leopard battle tanks can be delivered to Ukraine.
However, he said he had given his ministry the task this morning to “undertake an examination of the stocks” of the tanks available.
This is the closest the German government has so far come to suggesting it might be contemplating the use of the tanks in the conflict, even if it Germany’s allies might have hoped for more of an indication at this stage.
German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit meanwhile has told reporters in Berlin that Scholz is not making the decision on the delivery of Leopard 2 tanks dependent on whether or not the USA delivers its M1-Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
“At no time has there been any deal or demand that one thing would follow on from another,” he said. This is despite Scholz saying earlier in the week Germany would consider sending Leopard tanks only if the US agreed to send its tanks.
Hebestreit added:
I find it difficult to imagine a German chancellor dictating any conditions or making demands to an American president.
But he stressed that it was important for the government to make its decisions regarding the Ukraine conflict, in conjunction with the US, citing other weapons systems Germany has so far dispatched.
Asked how Germany might react if Poland carried out its threat to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without receiving the necessary export licence from Germany, Hebestreit said:
All our partners will surely want to behave in a law-abiding way.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has tweeted his address via video link to Ukraine-supporting defence ministers in Ramstein airbase where he pleaded with Germany and allies to send their battle tanks to Kyiv.
#Ramstein
The war started by RF doesn’t allow delays.
I can thank you hundreds of times – but hundreds of “thank you” are not hundreds of tanks.
We must speed up! Time must become our common weapon, just like air defense, artillery, armored vehicles & tanks.
The Kremlin must lose pic.twitter.com/wieu6fkMBn— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 20, 2023
Germany’s foreign intelligence service (BND) is alarmed by the losses the Ukrainian army is suffering in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, according to a report.
The army is losing a three-digit number of soldiers every day fighting against Russian forces in Bakhmut, Der Spiegel reports, citing information it had received.
The Russian capture of Bakhmut would have significant consequences as it would allow Russia to make further advances, the BND warned.
It comes after Russian proxy forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in the Donbas region said they had taken control of Klishchiivka, a small settlement south of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Zelenskiy pleads with Germany and allies to send tanks to Ukraine
Ukraine’s president has pleaded with Germany and western allies to send their battle tanks to Kyiv, amid speculation that Berlin would allow German-made Leopard 2s to be re-exported by other countries but not necessarily send any of its own stock.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking via video link at the opening of a meeting of Ukraine-supporting defence ministers from 50 countries in Ramstein, Germany, said it was “in your power” to at least make a decision in principle to send tanks.

Urgent action was necessary, the Ukrainian leader said, because “Russia is concentrating its forces, last forces, trying to convince everyone that hatred can be stronger than the world”.
It was necessary to speed up weapons supplies, Zelenskiy said, because the war with Russia amounted to a battle between freedom and autocracy.
It is about what kind of world people will live in, people who dream, love and hope.
Britain has joined a group of international partners to pursue criminal accountability for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said.
Russia’s “atrocities must not go unpunished”, Cleverly said in a statement, citing the deaths of soldiers and civilians and the displacement of millions of Ukrainians.
UK starts to shift ground and joins core group of countries looking into value of setting up a specialised hybrid tribunal into the crime of aggression in Ukraine. Says court must be integrated into Ukraine’s national justice system have international elements and complement ICC.
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) January 20, 2023
He added:
That’s why the UK has accepted Ukraine’s invitation to join this coalition, bringing our legal expertise to the table to explore options to ensure Russia’s leaders are held to account fully for their actions.
The statement said Britain’s involvement would include assessing the feasibility of a new “hybrid” tribunal, which could “complement established mechanisms for investigating war crimes, including the international criminal court and Ukraine’s domestic legal process”.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, says some European countries are prepared to send heavy tanks to Ukraine, and that he hopes the decision to provide them will be made at today’s meeting of defence ministers in Germany.
Borrell told reporters in Madrid:
This is the discussion that will take place in Ramstein today, where the EU will be represented. We have to give Ukraine the arms necessary not only to repel, which is what they’re doing, but also to regain terrain.
He added:
I think Ukraine needs the combat arms and heavy tanks that it has asked for and some European countries are prepared to give and I hope that is the decision that is taken.
The first delivery of UN humanitarian aid arrived near the frontline town of Soledar in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a UN spokesperson has said.
A three-truck convoy offloaded supplies of food, water, hygiene and medicines for about 800 people in areas controlled by the Ukrainian government, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA) spokesperson, Jens Laerke.
He did not provide details of the convoy’s exact location, or of how the OCHA was able to ensure its safety, but said the vehicles departed from Dnipro, adding:
People there are in dire need of aid so we are indeed happy this convoy has reached [them].
The agency is seeking to increase the number of aid convoys close to the frontlines and more are expected in the days ahead, he added.
Russia warns west will ‘regret’ sending tanks to Ukraine
Russia’s relationship with the US is at its “lowest point historically”, the Kremlin has said, with “no hope” of bilateral relations improving “in the foreseeable future”.
As western defence ministers gather at Ramstein airbase in Germany to discuss sending further military aid to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said supplying additional tanks to Kyiv would not “fundamentally change anything”.
The west will “regret” its “delusion” that Ukraine could win on the battlefield, he said. Peskov told reporters:
We have repeatedly said that such supplies will not fundamentally change anything, but will add problems for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
Asked whether supplying increasingly advanced weapons to Ukraine meant that the conflict was escalating, the Kremlin spokesperson replied:
You are absolutely right, it really is developing in an upward spiral. We see a growing indirect and sometimes direct involvement of Nato countries in this conflict … We see a devotion to the dramatic delusion that Ukraine can succeed on the battlefield. This is a dramatic delusion of the western community that will more than once be cause for regret, we are sure of that.
Hello everyone. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here again, taking over the live blog from Martin Belam to bring you the latest from the Russia-Ukraine war. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.
Summary of the day so far …
-
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has called for allies to “dig deeper” in their support for Ukraine as “history is watching us”, as he gave details of the $2.5bn military aid package the US announced on Thursday.
-
Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group in Germany, Austin said “This is a crucial moment. Russia is regrouping, recruiting and trying to re-equip. This is not a moment to slow down. It’s a time to dig deeper. But Ukrainian people are watching us. The Kremlin is watching us and history is watching us. So we won’t let up. And we won’t waver in our determination to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s imperial aggression.”
-
The meeting at the US Ramstein base was attended in person by Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov, and was addressed via video link by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
-
Zelenskiy had said his government was expecting “strong decisions” from defence leaders of Nato and other countries meeting on Friday to discuss boosting Ukraine’s ability to confront Russian forces with modern battle tanks.
-
A group of 11 Nato countries had pledged a raft of new military aid for Ukraine, ahead of today’s meeting. The aid from countries including Britain, Estonia, Latvia and Poland will include tens of stinger air defence systems, S-60 anti-aircraft guns, machine guns and training, according to a statement.
-
The US announced on Thursday $2.5bn in new weaponry and munitions for Ukraine. The package includes 90 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, an additional 59 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Avenger air defence systems, and large and small munitions, according to a Pentagon statement.
-
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the Donbas region has announced it has taken control of Klishchiivka, a small settlement south of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
-
Ukraine claims it has arrested seven Russian agents in Dnipro, who are accused of assisting missile attacks on the city.
-
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has stated that the Wagner mercenary group “almost certainly now commands up to 50,000 fighters in Ukraine and has become a key component of the Ukraine campaign”.
-
Fewer than 9% of western firms have divested from Russia since it launched its invasion of Ukraine, according to a study by academics at St Gallen University and the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you for the next few hours.
Shared From Source link Breaking News