December 22, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he discussed Kyiv's peace proposal with his Group of Seven colleagues this morning after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington. 

“I can just tell you that we’re looking at what he’s put forward. I was just on the — the video with our G7 partners this morning. And this is one of the things that we talked about,” Blinken told CNN’s Kylie Atwood. 

Blinken called Zelensky’s peace proposals “a good start.”

“They’re things that everyone should be able to, in one way or another, to rally to,” he said.

Blinken would not say how long it would take for the US and Ukraine to evaluate the plan together. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the two sides agreed to reviewing the plan yesterday in the meeting between US President Joe Biden and Zelensky.

What borders would Ukraine accept in a peace deal? Blinken said the US and Ukraine agreed on the overall peace effort underway. He did not respond more directly to a question of whether Kyiv would accept a goal of reclaiming territory up to its borders before the Feb. 24 invasion. Blinken has previously said that's the US focus, while Zelensky has outlined broader visions for retaking the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

Blinken said Ukraine has told the US that it is currently focused on taking back its eastern and southern territory that has been occupied since February.

“But that doesn’t prejudge in any way where this goes, where it settles,” said Blinken at his year-end news conference, emphasizing that it would be up to Ukraine to decide what a “just and durable” peace looks like.

Blinken also reiterated that Russia has shown “no meaningful interest” in diplomacy to end the war.

For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that his administration has always been open to talks and that "it was the Ukrainian leadership that refused itself to conduct negotiations.”

US President Joe Biden's administration rolled out new sanctions on 10 Russian naval entities after Russian operations against Ukrainian ports, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Thursday.

Here are more of the latest developments:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s amendment related to seized Russian oligarch’s assets and transferring them to the people of Ukraine passed by voice vote.

It’s the fourth amendment to be approved Thursday to the US government funding bill.

The US has trained approximately 3,100 Ukrainian troops to date on different systems, with training on the newly announced Patriot missile systems set to begin “very soon,” a senior defense official said.

Nearly half of those troops have been trained on M777 howitzers or HIMARS rocket launchers, two of the systems that have been critical to Ukrainian operations so far. Ukrainian forces have also been trained on vehicles, various forms of artillery, drones and other systems. 

The Pentagon will soon begin training Ukrainian personnel on how to operate and maintain the Patriot missile system, officially announced yesterday during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington.

Though the Pentagon would not specify exactly when the training would begin or how long it would take for Ukrainians to master the complex system, a senior defense official said Wednesday it would start “very soon” and would take “several months.”

The Patriot system costs between $450 and $550 million, the Pentagon said, depending on the configuration of the platform. Each missile costs approximately $4 million.

The US will also soon start an expanded training program for Ukrainian forces, including joint maneuver and combined arms training. This program will train approximately 500 soldiers per month on larger combat operations.

Newly downgraded US intelligence suggests the Russian mercenary group Wagner has assumed expanded influence and is recruiting convicts — including some with serious medical conditions — from prisons to supplement Moscow’s flagging military.

The group recently took delivery of arms from North Korea, a top US official said, a sign of its growing role in the war in Ukraine.

And the US believes Wagner could be locked in a power battle with the Russian military itself as it jockeys for influence with the Kremlin.

The revelations about the Wagner Group came a day after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky’s historic visit to Washington, where he thanked the United States for its military assistance and said more was needed to fend off Russian advances.

Some background: Wagner has emerged as a key player in the 10-month conflict. The group is often described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its creation in 2014, and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.

Kirby said the US estimates Wager currently has about 50,000 personnel deployed inside Ukraine, of which 40,00 could be convicts recruited from Russian prisons. He said the group was spending $100 million per month to fund its operations in Ukraine. 

The group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has even traveled personally to Russian prisons to recruit convicts himself to go to the front lines and fight. Some of them suffer from “serious medical conditions,” Kirby said.

Prigozhin, who has sometimes been referred to as “Putin’s chef,” already has close ties to the Russian president. But Kirby suggested he was working to strengthen those ties through his efforts to bolster Russian forces through his mercenary recruitment.

“It's all about how good he looks to Mr. Putin, and how well he's regarded at the Kremlin,” he said. “In fact, we would go so far as to say that his influence is expanding.”

Last month, Wagner received a delivery of infantry rockets and missiles from North Korea, Kirby said, an indication of how Russia and its military partners continue to seek ways around Western sanctions and export controls.

Wagner, not the Russian government, paid for the equipment. The US doesn’t believe it will significantly change the battlefield dynamic in Ukraine — but suggested North Korea could be planning to deliver further material.

US President Joe Biden's administration rolled out new sanctions on 10 Russian naval entities after Russian operations against Ukrainian ports, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Thursday.

The entities sanctioned include companies that produce different aspects of Russia’s naval capability. One of the sanctioned companies is a battery company, Rigel, that has been a supplier to the Russian navy for more than 15 years, the US State Department said. Also sanctioned was a central institute for scientific research, Elektropribor, which produces a navigation system for Russian combat ships. 

“The United States remains determined to use all appropriate measures to deter Russia’s attacks on Ukraine – whether those attacks be from the air, land, or sea. These accountability measures underscore a simple message: the Kremlin must end its brutal campaign against Ukraine,” Blinken said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his first video message since leaving Washington, DC, on Wednesday that he is returning to his country with "good results." 

In a selfie-style message on Telegram, the Ukrainian president said, “I am coming back from Washington. Coming with good results, that will really help.”

He also thanked US President Joe Biden for his “assistance and for international leadership and for his commitment to victory."

"I thank the US Congress, to both Houses, to all Parties who support Ukraine, to all those who wish us Victory as much as we wish it,” he added.

Zelensky said that “we are bringing to Ukraine, to Donbas, to Bakhmut and to the South, solutions that our Defence Forces have been waiting for."

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Patriot missile defense systems are "old" systems and Russia will "always find the antidote." 

"In regards to Patriots, this is quite an old system and it doesn't work as well as our S-300," Putin said, when asked by a reporter to comment on the United States' decision to provide a Patriot system to Ukraine. 

"So those doing it are just wasting their time, it's just delaying the conflict," Putin said. 

Some background: The Patriot’s radar system combines “surveillance, tracking, and engagement functions in one unit,” a description from the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) says, which makes it stand out among other air defense systems. The system’s engagements with incoming aerial threats are “nearly autonomous” aside from needing a “final launch decision” from the humans operating it.

The Group of Seven nations “are prepared to do more as needed on budget and economic support” for Ukraine in the year ahead, according to a joint statement from the group’s finance ministers Thursday.

For 2023, the group has mobilized “up to $32 billion US dollars of budget and economic support for Ukraine and continue to make further progress,” said the statement published by the German government.

“We also strongly encourage other donors to step up their support,” the finance ministers added.

In 2022, the G7 mobilized $32.7 billion US dollars of budget support to the Ukrainian government, some $18 billion dollars of which came from the European Union, according to the G7.

Remember: The G7, or Group of Seven, is made up of allied leaders from some of the world’s largest economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US.