Ukraine updates: Putin’s war plans ‘plain wrong’, says Biden

The West must provide more military aid to Ukraine and speed up its deliveries, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, says.

“Much more has to be done and much quicker,” Borrell said at the Munich Security Conference. “There is still a lot to be done. We have to increase and accelerate our military support.”

Al Jazeera’s James Bays reports from Brussels.

Some Republicans in the US are slamming Biden’s visit to Ukraine, invoking crises at home that they accuse the president of ignoring as he pledges support for Kyiv.

The opposition to Biden’s surprise visit highlights the views of a small but vocal cohort of ultraconservative US legislators who are sceptical of US support for Ukraine.

First-term Republican Congressman Andy Ogles accused Biden of prioritising “political field trips”.

“America-last Biden visited UKRAINE before visiting the people living through an environmental crisis in East Palestine, Ohio,” Ogles wrote on Twitter, referring to a toxic chemicals spill caused by a train derailment.

Read more here.

Joe Biden visited Ukraine today before visiting the good people of East Palestine, Ohio.

The Biden administration continues to put America last.

— Congressman Ben Cline (@RepBenCline) February 20, 2023

Biden has arrived in Poland after a surprise visit to Kyiv, the state-run news agency PAP cited Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk as saying.

The prime ministers of Poland and Italy have discussed military support for Ukraine and voiced agreement that the EU should be made stronger politically while cutting down on bureaucracy.

Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, both right-wing politicians, said they were on the same page on Ukraine and on wanting to impress on EU leaders that the bloc’s 27 member states make it strong through their diversity.

“Our views are very close on what the EU should be like as a player in the international arena,” Meloni said after talks in Warsaw with Morawiecki.

“We want Europe to be a political but not a bureaucratic giant, and we are working toward such a Europe,” Meloni said, adding that the “EU should take into account that there are various identities building it.”

More than 30 countries – including the US, United Kingdom and France – have pledged their support for banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in international sporting events, a British government statement says.

The statement follows recent proposals from the International Olympic Committee that suggest a pathway is being explored to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to return to competition, including at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, the government said.

Missiles and mortars kill and maim people, but Russia’s year-long war in Ukraine is also poisoning the air, ground and sea, says Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine’s minister of environmental protection, who is building a case that Russia should pay for what he calls its ecological “crimes”.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a large amount of gases that cause global warming to be released into the atmosphere.

It has also created energy challenges in developing countries, which have intensified global discussions about climate justice.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal says after meeting the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that he hopes to clinch at least $15bn for his country, which is trying to cover budget deficits and continue fighting Russia’s invasion.

“We are looking for the launch of a new multi-year support programme valued at more than $15 billion,” Shmyhal wrote on the Telegram messaging app after talks in Kyiv with IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva.

A video posted on Zelenskyy’s Telegram account showed Georgieva meeting him and senior Ukrainian officials.

A Ukrainian soldier has compared Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks to a Mercedes as he underwent training with them ahead of their arrival on the battlefield.

He is among dozens of Ukrainian soldiers whom Germany is training on Leopard 2 simulators and then the tanks themselves in Munster at its largest military training ground before sending the armoured vehicles to Ukraine.

“It is crucial that we use this modern weapon wisely,” the 57-year-old soldier said. “It will bring the breakthrough, and we will win in the end.”

Asked about the difference between Western and Soviet tanks, he said: “You can imagine it like the difference between a Mercedes and a Zhiguli,” referring to a Soviet car sold under the brand name Lada in the West.

China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, has called for negotiations and peace for the sake of the world, and Europe in particular, ahead of a visit to Moscow.

“We would like a political solution to provide a peaceful and sustainable framework for Europe,” Wang said during a stop in Hungary that could result in billions of dollars of new Chinese investment in the country.

In a Facebook video filmed during a meeting with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, Wang said the world was afflicted by disorder and wars.

“Let me echo what we have just heard [from you] and jointly declare to the world that China and Hungary gladly work together with other peace-loving countries to bring the current hostilities to a halt as soon as possible,” Wang told Szijjarto.

EU members should approve their 10th package of sanctions against Russia this week, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says.

“It is going to be approved in the next hours. Before the 24th [of February] in any case”, he told reporters, referring to the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The measures, which still require the unanimous approval of all EU states, would target four more Russian banks; imports from Russia, including rubber; and exports to Russia, including heavy vehicles.

Ukraine is still fighting “a brutal and unjust war”, Biden says days before the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“One year later, Kyiv stands, and Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden declared after meeting Zelenskyy at Mariinsky Palace. “The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

Biden spent more than five hours in the Ukrainian capital, consulting with Zelenskyy on next steps, honouring the country’s fallen soldiers and meeting US embassy staff.

Air raid sirens howled as Biden walked alongside Zelenskyy during a visit to wartime Kyiv.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: “This is a historic visit, unprecedented in modern times, to have the president of the United States visit the capital of a country at war where the United States military does not control the critical infrastructure.”

The founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has accused unspecified officials of denying his fighters sufficient ammunition.

In a seven-minute audio message published by his press service, Yevgeny Prigozhin said he was required to “apologise and obey” to secure ammunition for his Wagner Group.

Speaking at times with a raised voice and occasionally swearing, he said: “I’m unable to solve this problem despite all my connections and contacts.”

Prigozhin said Russia’s military production is now sufficient to supply the forces fighting at the front and the supply difficulties his fighters were experiencing were the result of conscious decisions.

“Those who interfere with us trying to win this war are absolutely, directly working for the enemy,” he said.

Poland has announced more restrictions on road traffic with Belarus, hours after saying Minsk was expelling three of its diplomats.

Freight traffic for Belarusian vehicles at the Kukuryki-Kozlowicze border crossing will be suspended as of 7pm (18:00 GMT) on Tuesday, the Polish interior ministry said.

The decision was linked to Minsk curbing traffic for Polish road freight on Belarus’s borders with Latvia and Lithuania, it said.

On February 9, Poland had announced it was closing a border crossing into Belarus at Bobrowniki, citing “state security” concerns and sending already hostile relations between the two countries to a new low.

Belarus is a close ally of Russia, and Minsk has backed Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Poland has been a leading supporter of Kyiv as it faces down the offensive.

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has accused President Vladimir Putin of destroying Russia’s future for the sake of his own personal ambition.

In a post on social media ahead of the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, Navalny said Russia had hit “rock bottom” and could only recover once the “Putin dictatorship” had been dismantled.

Navanly also called for Moscow to “reimburse” Kyiv for the damage inflicted during the war.

“The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems within Russia, Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and his obsession with his own historical legacy. He wants to go down in history as ‘the conqueror tsar’…,” Navalny said in a series of posts on Twitter.

He added that Russia’s defeat on the battlefield was “inevitable”, and that Moscow had to withdraw its troops from Ukraine and recognise its borders as they were set in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

On the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, I have summarized the political platform of mine and, hopefully, of many other decent people.
15 theses of a Russian citizen who desires the best for their country.

— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) February 20, 2023

Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service says Russia poses a clear military threat in the country’s immediate area.

“The European Security Order as we know it has ceased to exist, … and with that, the risks for Swedish security have also increased,” Lena Hallin, head of agency said at a news conference.

Sweden has applied to join NATO in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but its membership bid is being held up by Hungary and Turkey.

Hallin said she expected Russia to respond to Stockholm applying for NATO membership by strengthening its military capabilities near Sweden when it has the opportunity to do so.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began nearly a year ago, the world has been broadly categorised into three camps – those allied with Kyiv, those impartial to the conflict and those that back Moscow.

Read more here.

Here are two maps that we update daily to chart the latest war developments:

Six Russian soldiers have been killed in a fire in a bunker in western Russia’s Kursk region, state media report, citing the Ministry of Defence.

The ministry said the fire was the result of a “gross violation” of safety rules, the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reported.

The fire occurred near the village of Ulanok, fewer than 10km (six miles) from Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia, the TASS news agency reported, citing emergency services.

The US notified Russia of Biden’s trip to Kyiv hours before the visit took place, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan says.

“We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes, and because of the sensitive nature of those communications, I won’t get into how they responded or what the precise nature of our message was, but I can confirm that we provided that notice,” Sullivan said.

He added that Biden wanted to send a “clear, unmistakable message” of enduring US support for Ukraine with his presence.

Jon Finer, a deputy national security adviser, said the entire operation had been meticulously planned over months with the final decision on whether to go ahead with the visit taken on Friday.

Zelenskyy has warned China against supporting Russia, saying doing so would bring about a world war.

“For us, it is important that China does not support the Russian Federation in this war. In fact, I would like it to be on our side,” Zelenskyy told the German newspaper Die Welt.

“At the moment, however, I don’t think it’s possible,” he said.

“But I do see an opportunity for China to make a pragmatic assessment of what is happening here … because if China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war, and I do think that China is aware of that.”

Belarus is expelling three Polish diplomats, a spokesman for the Polish foreign ministry has said, as tensions between the two countries rise.

“They have to leave Belarus by the end of the day on Wednesday,” Lukasz Jasina said. He added Warsaw was “thinking about a good and proper response to this”.

The trio were two consuls from Grodno and the go-between of the Polish border guard in Minsk.

Joe Biden has departed from Kyiv after making a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital, according to reporters travelling with the US President.

Biden’s lightning visit marked his first trip to Ukraine since Russia launched its offensive on February 24 last year.

He had been scheduled to travel to Poland today.

Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine’s environment minister, says Russia’s offensive in Ukraine has caused more than $51bn of environmental damage to date.

“From the first day of the war, we began to develop new methodologies which we use now to calculate all of the environmental damage,” Strilets told Al Jazeera from Kyiv.

“The figure of $51bn will only increase because every day we see new damage and new cases,” he added.

Strilets said some of Ukraine’s natural environments had been “lost forever” as a result of the conflict.

“But any money, any time, will help us to repair what Russia destroyed. We have burnt trees and a lot of pollutants in the air,” he said.

The US president’s unannounced visit to Kyiv has come just days before the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

See photos from Joe Biden’s visit here.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stressed Washington’s strong support for Sweden and Finland’s quick NATO accession.

Blinken’s remarks, delivered while on a visit to Turkey, came as his Turkish counterpart stressed the need for more concrete action on the part of the Nordic countries.

Read more here.

Turkey is not exporting products that could be used in Russia’s war effort, the country’s foreign minister has said after Washington warned Ankara about the sale of chemicals, microchips and other items.

“It is not true that we have exported to Russia products that can be used in the defence industry,” Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“We asked the United States to notify [us] if there are any violations on this issue,” he added.

His remarks came after a top US Treasury official visited Turkish government and private sector officials earlier this month to urge more cooperation in disrupting the flow of goods that can be used by Moscow’s defence industries.

Intelligence agencies in the Netherlands have warned that Russia appears to be preparing for the disruption and sabotage of critical offshore infrastructure in the Dutch part of the North Sea.

“Dutch vital maritime infrastructure in the North Sea, such as internet cables, gas pipes and windmill farms, can be vulnerable for sabotage,” the Dutch military and general intelligence agencies AIVD and MIVD said in a joint report.

“Russia is secretly charting this infrastructure and is undertaking activities which indicate preparations for disruption and sabotage.”

The agencies said covert threats by Russia to water and energy supplies in the Netherlands were also conceivable. There was no immediate response to the agencies’ claims from Russia.

Sergei Markov, a Russian political scientist and former spokesman of President Vladimir Putin, claims that Moscow had guaranteed Biden’s safety during his trip to the Ukrainian capital.

“Joe Biden came to Kyiv only with a personal guarantee for security from Vladimir Putin, that there will be no rocket and aviation strikes … during the visit,” Markov told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera was unable to verify his claim.

He added that the timing of the trip was significant, as it comes before Putin is set to deliver a national address and ahead of the first anniversary of the invasion on Friday.

He argued that Biden had a lot to gain from the visit, in terms of domestic politics.

“Leaders inside the [US] Democratic Party believe he’s not physically and mentally able” to carry out presidential duties, Markov said, adding that the trip was a “big victory” for Biden against his political opponents.

Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Moscow, says US President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv will “reinforce” the Kremlin’s view that the war in Ukraine is a broader conflict against the collective West.

“This [visit] is happening just 24 ahead of the very important state of the union address from the Russian president where he is going to tell his audience, the people of Russia, that he is fighting an international hegemony of sorts,” Bin Javaid said.

“Russia has always insisted that it had to go to war because it could not sustain the level of hostility that it was seeing accumulating on its border from NATO and the Western alliance,” he added, noting that Biden’s trip was “going to reinforce that view”.

A German government spokesperson welcomed US President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine.

Steffen Hebestreit said during a government press conference that the visit was a “good signal,” but declined to provide further comment.

US President Joe Biden says his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was “plain wrong” in his plan for the offensive in Ukraine.

“He was counting on us not sticking together. He was counting on an inability to keep NATO united and he was counting on us not to be able to bring in others on the side of Ukraine,” Biden said at a news conference in Kyiv alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“He thought he could outlast us. I don’t think he’s thinking that right now,” he added.

“He has just been plain wrong. And one year later, the evidence is right here in this room, we stand here together.”

Here are a few more images of President Biden’s surprise wartime visit:

February 24 will mark one year since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

After a year of bloody fighting, and with both sides now thought to be readying for offensives in the Spring, Al Jazeera takes a look at the respective capabilities of each.

Read more here.

Ukraine’s president has lauded Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv as the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion approaches.

“Joseph Biden, welcome to Kyiv! Your visit is an extremely important sign of support for all Ukrainians,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram.

The US leader’s visit comes at a crucial moment in the war as Biden looks to keep allies unified in their support for Ukraine with the war expected to intensify in the coming months as both sides prepare for anticipated spring offensives.

Zelenskyy is pressing allies to speed up the delivery of pledged weapon systems and is calling on the West to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine – something that Biden to date has declined to do.

The US will provide Ukraine with a new military aid package worth $500m, President Joe Biden has said.

Biden said the package would be announced on Tuesday and that Washington would also provide more ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) in Ukraine’s possession.

US President Joe Biden has made an unannounced visit to Ukraine.

As he walked through central Kyiv with President Zelenskyy, sirens warned of a possible Russian attack.

🔗: https://t.co/Q4PQipYNgw pic.twitter.com/pLETpPL1to

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 20, 2023

Here are some first images of Biden’s visit to Ukraine from various news agencies.

Ukraine’s president has said his French counterpart is “wasting his time” after Emmanuel Macron suggested over the weekend that the war would have to be settled by negotiations.

Responding to Macron’s remarks, Zelenskyy said in an interview published on Sunday that any such dialogue would be “useless”.

“In fact, Macron is wasting his time. I have come to the conclusion that we are not able to change the Russian attitude,” he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

“It is up to them to choose or not to cooperate with the community of nations on the basis of mutual respect.”

The White House has released a statement from US President Joe Biden to mark his visit to Kyiv.

Here are his remarks in full:

“As the world prepares to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, I am in Kyiv today to meet with President Zelenskyy and reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

When Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us. But he was dead wrong.

Today, in Kyiv, I am meeting with President Zelenskyy and his team for an extended discussion on our support for Ukraine.

I will announce another delivery of critical equipment, including artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments.

And I will share that later this week, we will announce additional sanctions against elites and companies that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine.

Over the last year, the United States has built a coalition of nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific to help defend Ukraine with unprecedented military, economic, and humanitarian support – and that support will endure.

I also look forward to traveling on to Poland to meet President Duda and the leaders of our Eastern Flank Allies, as well as deliver remarks on how the United States will continue to rally the world to support the people of Ukraine and the core values of human rights and dignity in the UN Charter that unite us worldwide.”

US President Joe Biden has made an unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital, days before the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Biden’s visit to Kyiv came as air raid sirens blared across the city and other parts of Ukraine. There were no initial reports of Russian missile or air attacks.

Read more here.

The European Union’s top diplomat has urged the bloc to ensure that Ukraine has enough ammunition to continue its fight against Russia’s invasion.

“It is the most urgent issue. If we fail on that, the result of the war is in danger,” Josep Borrell said before a meeting with the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels.

“The Russian artillery shoots about 50,000 shots a day, and Ukraine needs to be at the same level of capacity. They have cannons but they lack ammunition,” he added.

The Kremlin has accused Moldova’s leaders of pursuing an anti-Russian agenda, saying relations between the two countries are “very tense”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s remarks came after Moldova’s parliament last week approved a pro-Western government led by new Prime Minister Dorin Recean after he pledged to revive the economy and chart a course towards the European Union.

Russia has rejected claims made by Moldova’s president that Moscow is plotting to destabilise the former Soviet republic.

China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is expected to hold talks on Monday with Russian officials over the war in Ukraine as part of a visit to Moscow.

His trip comes after the United States warned Bejing over the weekend against providing weapons to Russia.

China hit back at the US on Monday, saying Washington was in no position to make demands.

“China’s comprehensive collaborative partnership with Russia is based on the basis of non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third parties, and is a matter within the sovereignty of two independent countries,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular daily briefing in Beijing.