February 19, 2024 - Russia-Ukraine news

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged the United States to "deliver what they promised," by facilitating Ukraine with a support package to help in their defense against Russian aggression. 

Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Saturday, Stoltenberg said it was vital and urgent that the US decide on a package for Ukraine.  

Stoltenberg reminded the audience in attendance that Ukraine is currently running low on resources, particularly ammunition.

“At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we depleted our stocks, but now they are running quite low. So now we are focusing extremely also very much on how to ramp up production,” Stoltenberg said.

The NATO secretary general went on to announce that “there are new factories being set up, production has increased, but there is urgent need to do more.”

Last week, the US Senate passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill with assistance for Ukraine, but the bill faces an uncertain future in the US House of Representatives, where House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled he will not bring it for a vote.

China does not sell lethal weapons to parties in conflict, the country's top diplomat told his Ukrainian counterpart over the weekend, during their meeting at the Munich Security Conference.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing does not add “fuel to the fire” and will continue to play a constructive role in ending the Russia-Ukraine war, according to a statement published Sunday by China’s Foreign Ministry.

China claims impartiality in the war but has refused to condemn Moscow's illegal invasion and has acted as an increasingly critical lifeline for the sanctions-hit Russian economy.

Meanwhile, United States officials have repeatedly raised concerns with China about evidence it has suggesting that Chinese companies have sold non-lethal equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine. Last year, a US intel report said China was providing technology and equipment to Russia that was increasingly important to Moscow’s war.

Despite its close ties with Moscow, Beijing has also attempted to promote itself as a peace broker in the conflict — a position reiterated by Wang in remarks at the conference Saturday.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on X that he spoke with Wang about "bilateral relations, trade, and the need to restore a just and lasting peace in Ukraine."

The Ukrainian military is monitoring how Russian forces are regrouping and preparing for their next moves after capturing the eastern town of Avdiivka in Donetsk region, Ukrainian military spokesperson said Monday. 

Illia Yevlash, spokesperson for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said now Russian forces had won Advdiivka, they would be able to move their forces wherever else they deemed necessary.

Yevlash said many brigades who had been involved in taking Adviivka, including intelligence units, special operations units, artillery, paratroopers and motorized infantry units could now be redirected.

Russian forces have been attacking areas near Bakhmut and Mariinka in the Donetsk region, pushing towards the city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv region in the north, and amassing forces in Zhaporizhzhia region in the south. 

Russia is entering its third year of war in Ukraine with an unprecedented amount of cash in government coffers, bolstered by a record $37 billion of crude oil sales to India last year, according to a new analysis, which concludes that some of the crude was refined by India and then exported to the United States as oil products worth more than $1 billion.

This flow of payments, ultimately to Moscow’s benefit, comes from India increasing its purchases of Russian crude by over 13 times its pre-war amounts, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air analysis, exclusively shared with CNN. It amounts to US strategic partner New Delhi stepping in to replace crude purchases by Western buyers, reduced by sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the analysis said.

Not sanctioned: While Russian crude sales to India are not subject to sanctions and are entirely legitimate, an examination of shipping routes by experts suggests this huge volume of shipments might involve the so-called “shadow fleet” of crude tankers, specially created by Moscow to try to disguise who it is trading with and how, and maximize the Kremlin’s profits.

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Letters and correspondence obtained by the Free Press (FP), a US based media company and independent media organization Holod.Media show Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny – who died at the age of 47 – had been communicating with famous refusenik Natan Sharansky and readers of Holod.Media at the organization’s request. 

The term “refusenik” referred to those who had been refused exit visas in the Soviet Union.

The correspondence began between Navalny and Sharansky on April 3, 2023, and lasted until April 17, 2023, according to the letters published by the FP. The FP published two letters Navalny wrote to Sharansky and one letter Sharansky wrote in response.  

Navalny’s team told CNN that it is “safe to presume” the letters were written by Navalny. 

The letters published by the FP show a shared humor between the two, as Sharansky called the punishment cell where he was held his “alma mater” and Navalny joked there was no better place to spend the Holy Week (Easter week) than in a punishment cell, according to the FP.  

Navalny was the first to reach out to Sharansky on April 3 of last year from penal colony IK-6, saying that he was expecting to be transferred to the same colony where Sharansky once served his sentence and adding that there will “probably be a plaque” saying “Natan Sharansky was held here,” according to letters published by the FP.

The FP say Navalny obtained a Russian copy of Sharansky’s memoir ‘Fear No Evil’ from his lawyers before reaching out. In a second letter, Sharansky said he received a “kind shock” after receiving his letter and responded to him “not only as an ‘author to reader’” but also as an “admirer.”

US President Joe Biden said House Republicans are “making a big mistake” in not responding to Russian aggression with more security funding for Ukraine. Biden added he’s willing to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson about the matter “if he has anything to say.” 

He did not sound optimistic when asked if he thought Alexey Navalny’s death would do anything to nudge the House GOP toward taking up the bill. “I hope so, but I’m not sure anything is going to change,” he said. 

He also said he was considering additional sanctions in the wake of Navalny’s death in a Russian prison camp.

Three days after Russian prison services announced that Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny had died, his widow Yulia Navalnaya vowed to continue his mission to create a "happy, beautiful Russia."

The jailed Russian opposition figure died Friday at a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle, according to the Russian prison service. He was serving multiple sentences for fraud, extremism and other charges that he dismissed as politically motivated.

In an 8-minute-long address on social media, Navalnaya accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his death while saying authorities were hiding her late husband's body, suggesting he had been poisoned.

Separately, Navalny's spokesperson said on X that his body will not be returned to the family for at least another 14 days.

Meanwhile, on the battlefront, Ukrainian forces on Friday announced their withdrawal from Avdiivka, a key town that in recent months became one of the most fiercely contested battles on the eastern front.

Here's what else to know this morning:

Alexey Navalny’s body will not be returned to the family for at least another 14 days, said Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

His body will be under “some sort of chemical examination” in that period, she added.

Navalny's widow has accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his death.

Traveling from the Munich Security Conference toward Ukraine’s frontlines, the polite frustration and manicured pleas of Western leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky feel yet more desperate. The warnings that Ukraine might suffer setbacks on the frontline if the US Congress continued to hold up a $60 billion aid package have now curdled into a bitter, brutal reality.

The pledges and rhetoric have so far amounted to little; in the wait, or abyss, ahead, Ukraine is losing people and land. It is all very real, very immediate and stark. After months of stalemate, the possibility of sweeping changes on the frontlines is quite real.

The horrific death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny meant the brutality of President Vladimir Putin's regime was amplified and crystal-clear for European leaders who had feared the gathering would be dogged by doubts over a future Trump presidency’s adherence to the NATO alliance. Latvia’s president spoke of “murder,” Germany’s defense minister of how the death showed Russia was “willing and able to provoke” the West. Ukraine reasoned it was clear proof Putin was too irrational a man to negotiate with.

Yet still, the conference – often a talking shop, fixated on entourages and colored passes over concrete results – ended without major progress. US President Joe Biden had said in 2021 that Navalny’s death would lead to “devastating consequences” for Russia. Yet the White House’s toolkit has been somewhat emptied by the 2022 invasion and as of Monday morning – 72 hours after Navalny’s passing was announced – no measures have been announced.

Read more on decisions the West will face in the coming months