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The military situation is becoming increasingly difficult around the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday as many of Ukraine’s battlefields turn to mud. “In the Bakhmut sector, the situation is constantly becoming more difficult,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly address. “The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions for fortification and defence.” Russia’s defence ministry claimed its forces destroyed a Ukrainian ammunition depot near the town – the focal point of Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine – also shooting down four Himars missiles and five drones launched by Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s Pulkovo Airport in St Petersburg temporarily suspended all flights on Tuesday amid unconfirmed media reports of an unidentified object such as a drone being seen nearby. Some flights were diverted back to Moscow while the airport was shut for around an hour. Russia’s ministry of defence later announced there had been a training exercise between air defences and civilian aviation authorities.
Emergency services put out a fire at an oil depot in southern Russia overnight after a drone was spotted flying overhead, the RIA news agency said on Tuesday. The fire in the Russian town of Tuapse, Krasnador was reported at 2.30am local time and spread to an area of about 200 sq metres before it was extinguished. “The oil tanks were not affected. There was no spill of oil products. No injuries,” said Sergei Boyko, who leads the local administration.
The Russian ministry of defence has stated that it foiled two attempted Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil using drones overnight. It said “28 February, at night, the Kyiv regime attempted to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar territory and the Republic of Adygea.”
A hacking attack caused some Russian regional broadcasters to put out a false warning on Tuesday urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the emergencies ministry said. “As a result of the hacking of servers of radio stations and TV channels, in some regions of the country information about the announcement of an air alert was broadcast. This information is false and does not correspond to reality”. A similar attack caused commercial radio stations in some Russian regions to send air alarm messages on Wednesday 22 February.
The loss of an A-50 Mainstay would be significant as it is critical to Russian air operations for “providing an air battlespace picture”, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in response to earlier claims from Belarusian anti-war partisans to have severely damaged a Russian military aircraft on Sunday.
China has “very clearly” taken Russia’s side and has been “anything but an honest broker” in efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, US department of state spokesperson Ned Price said at a news briefing on Monday. China has provided Russia with “diplomatic support, political support, with economic support, with rhetorical support,” he added.
Russia has given a lukewarm response to a Chinese peace plan to end the war in Ukraine but said it was paying “a great deal of attention” to the detail. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said any initiatives that might bring peace closer were worthy of attention and Beijing’s voice should be heard, but the nuances of the proposal are important and, for now, he didn’t see any signs suggesting a peaceful resolution could be achieved. “Any attempt to formulate theses for reaching a peaceful settlement of the problem is welcome, but, of course, the nuances are important,” Peskov told the Izvestia daily.
Russia will not resume participation in the Start nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US until Washington listens to Moscow’s position, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in remarks published on Tuesday. Russian president Vladimir Putin last week announced Russia’s decision to suspend participation in the latest Start treaty, after accusing the west of being directly involved in attempts to strike its strategic airbases. Peskov told the daily Izvestia in an interview that the “attitude of the collective west”, led by the US needs to change towards Moscow. “The security of one country cannot be ensured at the expense of the security of another,” Peskov said.
The US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Tuesday vowed support for Kazakhstan’s independence on a trip to boost influence in Central Asia,
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, is due to visit Beijing on Tuesday for a meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping, in a high-profile trip symbolising the widening gulf between the US and China over the war in Ukraine. Xi’s meeting with Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, is seen internationally as a sign of where Beijing’s sympathies lie.
The US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, met with Zelenskiy and other key Ukrainian government officials in a surprise visit to Ukraine to reaffirm Washington’s support for Kyiv on Monday. Following talks with prime minister Denys Shmyhal, Yellen said that the US has provided nearly $50bn in security, economic and humanitarian assistance, and announced another multibillion-dollar package to boost the country’s economy.
The airline carrier Wizz Air has announced it will suspend flights to Moldova’s capital, Chișinău, from 14 March due to concerns about the safety of its airspace. In a statement, the company said it had taken the “difficult but responsible” decision to suspend flights because of the “high, but not imminent” risk in Moldova’s airspace.
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