Ukraine Russia News – Live: British Challenger 2 tanks to reach Kiev within weeks, Ben Wallace says

Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has said Ukraine could receive promised British tanks within weeks.

The Challenger 2 tanks will arrive in Ukraine in the “spring,” he said, speaking to Ukrainian soldiers training to use the superior Western tank.

“It is extremely inspiring to come and see Ukrainian soldiers training on British Challenger 2 tanks. Their resilience and determination to succeed for the liberation of their country sends a powerful message to Russia,” said Wallace.

Britain has already given more than 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers basic training in drone warfare and has been training tank crews since late January, part of what ministers say is proof of the country’s leading role in supporting Ukraine.

Aid worker from the UK who have visited Ukraine have shared the lessons they’ve learned over the past 12 months, saying: “I’ve never seen those facial expressions before and I’ve spent years working in hospitals.”

Nursemidwife and aid worker Wendy Warrington, 56, from Bury, Greater Manchester, and Liberty Rose, a 27-year-old nursing student who lives in Emsworth, Hampshirehave both visited Ukraine in the 12 months since the war started.

The pair spoke to the PA news agency about the “strength and resilience” required to help in the war-torn country, as well as their tips for how people can help while the conflict continues.

Danielle Desouza reports:

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he and Rishi Sunak spoke last night over a phone call ahead of War Day.

“In the evening I spoke with the Prime Minister of Great Britain. We are working very strongly together with Great Britain to strengthen our warriors, to bring our common victory closer, to implement our defense agreements reached during my visit to London,” he said in his evening speech

Mr Zelensky said: “And it would be great if all our partners, like Britain, understood how the speed of defense equipment affects concrete successes on the battlefield.”

We also discussed important political issues that need to be resolved this week, he added.

He doesn’t have that changed the script very. For Vladimir Putin, it was as if the past year of setbacks, debates, and humiliation for his own powers had never happened. For him, absurdly, it was the West that started the war, and is “guilty” – not Russia.

It is apparently the Ukrainians who are the aggressive neo-Nazis, and not the brutal nationalists in the Kremlin who sent the tanks into Ukraine a year ago and, unable to prevail on the battlefield, they have spent the past 12 months terrorizing civilians. Even now, with so many victims that the Russian president has had to announce a new national agency to support the bereaved, largest war in Europe since 1945 still referred to using the euphemism “special military operation“.

Despite the failure of his “special military operation”, the deterioration of domestic living standards and international isolation, the Russian leader has not been toppled, writes Sean O’Grady:

Valentyna Mozgova sweeps broken glass and other debris from the vacant halls of the bombed-out hospital where she began her career. The 55-year-old lab technician lives in the basement and now works as a lone watchman.

Russian artillery strikes targeted the Marinskaya Central District Hospital in 2017 and again in 2021. However, numerous barrages over the past seven months forced the hospital’s medical staff to flee, destroying key departments such as neurology and gynecology, as well as a general medicine clinic in the process. .

Mozgova chose to stay. Having worked in the hospital’s laboratories since graduating from medical school in the late 1980s, she agreed to serve as the hospital’s security guard for 10,000 hryvnias ($250) a month. She and her husband were soon joined in the basement shelter by five others who had lost their homes to bombings, a dog and a cat.

Mozgova picks up the broom at 8 a.m. sharp every third day to inspect the corridors, carefully avoiding the fragments of Russian Grad rockets scattered across the floors for fear of another explosion.

“Everything is decaying and falling apart,” she told The Associated Press. “But I’m so tired of it. I want to live my life normally, sleep in my bed, watch my TV, not jump at the sound of an explosion, go to work calmly and do my job.”

War has been a disaster for Ukraine and a crisis for the world. Since then, the world is a more unstable and fearful place Russia invaded its neighbor on February 24, 2022.

A year later, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously injured on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, renewed nations’ ties with one another, and eroded a tightly knit global economy.

Here are five ways the war has changed the world:

The US president and NATO secretary general held talks with the military alliance’s eastern flank to reassure them that the Biden administration is acutely aware of looming threats from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Bucharest Nine are NATO allies who joined the military alliance after being dominated by Moscow during the Cold War.

Mr Biden has been in Poland after his surprise trip to Ukraine, where he reiterated US support for Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops in their fight against Vladimir Putins strengths.

The meeting comes after Vladimir Putin scrapped a landmark nuclear arms control treaty just days before the first anniversary of his invasion of Ukraine, amid a period of the highest tensions between Russia and the West in decades since the Cold War.

Russia has said it will consider taking “further countermeasures” against USA and its allies after it suspended its participation in a key nuclear weapon arms act.

His deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has now said that Russia will “monitor” the US to decide whether to initiate further action.

He said: “We will, of course, closely monitor the continued actions of the United States and its allies, including with a view to taking further countermeasures, if necessary.”

Mr Putin announced that Russia would no longer abide by the agreement, which limits participating countries’ nuclear capabilities, for an extended period of time. authorization address – where he also blamed the West for the war in Ukraine.

My colleague Kate Plummer reports:

A year after the invasion of Ukraine started, Russias reintegration into the sporting world threatens to create the biggest rift in the Olympic movement since the Cold War.

Russia is still banned from many international sporting events, but that may soon change. Next year’s Paris Olympics are fast approaching and qualifying events are underway. The International Olympic Committee is working to get athletes from Russia and ally Belarus back into competition, but not everyone agrees.

If Russian athletes are to return to competition, the sports world must resolve two key questions that became clear in the days after the invasion: How can Russian athletes return without alienating Ukrainians? And what can be done about the Russians who support the war?

As the first fighting raged, the Ukrainian fencing team refused to compete against Russia at a tournament in Egypt, holding up a sign reading: “Stop Russia! Stop the war! Save Ukraine! Save Europe!”

The International Federation of Journalists has suspended the Russian Federation of Journalists with immediate effect over its actions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its role in annexed Ukrainian territories.

The IFJ, which represents more than 600,000 media workers worldwide, said the Russian union’s membership was suspended following an investigation and then a vote by its global executive committee on Wednesday.

The vote was held after the union refused to reconsider its decision to set up branches in four regions annexed by Russia, the federation said.

“The actions of the Russian Union of Journalists in establishing four branches in the annexed Ukrainian territories have clearly shattered … solidarity and sown division among sister unions,” IFJ President Dominique Pradalié said.