JAN 19, 2023
Germany faces mounting pressure to supply battle tanks to Kyiv and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is airing frustration about not obtaining enough weaponry as Western allies confer on how best to support Ukraine nearly 11 months into Russia’s invasion.
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Scholz has been wary of pressure, insisting that Germany wouldn’t go it alone and pointing to a need to ensure that NATO doesn’t become a party to the war with Russia, though every time so far Berlin has eventually moved ahead. He portrays
his cautious weighing of each step as a virtue.
In Davos Wednesday, Scholz avoided directly answering a question about Leopards, saying Germany will remain one of Ukraine’s top weapons suppliers and that “we are never doing something just by ourselves, but together with others — especially the United States.”
German officials have conveyed their hesitancy to allow allies to give Leopards unless the U.S. also sends Ukraine the Abrams, according to a U.S. official who wasn’t authorized to comment and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon says the U.S. will send 90 Stryker combat vehicles and an additional 59 Bradley fighting vehicles to Ukraine, in addition to hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition.
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The package, valued at $2.5 billion, does not include tanks, which has become a point of contention as Germany has indicated it will not send its own Leopard tanks to Ukraine unless the U.S. sends the Abrams. The U.S. has said that the Abrams tank, which is propelled by a complex turbine engine similar to an aircraft jet engine, would not be a good fit for the current fight because of its frequent maintenance and fueling needs.
The ammunition included in the package will replenish the U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket artillery systems, the NASAMS air defense systems, the Bradleys’ 25 mm cannon and hundreds of tow missiles for the Bradleys’ anti-tank weaponry. The package also includes eight additional Avenger air defense systems, 350 Humvees, 53 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPS, thousands of anti-armor rockets and an additional 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition.
JAN 20, 2023
GORAZDE, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Residents of eastern Bosnia's city of Gorazde do not need imaginations to understand the suffering of Ukraine's people.
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Residents of eastern Bosnia’s city of Gorazde do not need imaginations to understand the suffering of Ukraine’s people. Three decades ago, they endured more than three years of extreme hardship as Bosnian Serbs pummeled their city with rockets and artillery from the surrounding hills.
The long siege during Bosnia’s 1992-95 interethnic war cut off Gorazde from access to electricity, food, medicine and the outside world. The people there found creative ways to keep lights on and heating working, survival tips they now are sharing with civilians plunged into darkness and cold by Russia’s relentless missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s power grid.
Social media posts on Friday said air-defense systems have been installed in several spots in Moscow, including atop the Russian Defense Ministry headquarters.
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Social media posts on Friday said air-defense systems have been installed in several spots in Moscow, including atop the Russian Defense Ministry headquarters.
Russian officials have not commented on the reports of weaponry resembling a Pantsir-S1 mobile anti-aircraft system spotted on the roofs of a building in central Moscow about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) east of the Kremlin and of the Defense Ministry, which looms along the Moscow River across from Gorky Park.
Reports earlier in the week said S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile units were seen near the sprawling Losiny Ostrov forest park on Moscow’s northern border and at an agricultural institute in the capital.