Russia-Ukraine war live: rivalry between Wagner and Russian army ‘key factor in end of prison recruitment drive’

Are RAF Typhoons what Ukraine needs?

Dan Sabbagh

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call this week for “powerful English planes” was something of a surprise. The demand for western fast jets may have been predictable, but not the apparent request for Typhoons, the workhorse fighter of an increasingly stretched RAF.

Prior to the president’s attention-grabbing European trip, Ukrainian lobbying for Nato-standard combat aircraft had been focused almost entirely on US-made F-16s, of which there are 3,000 in service worldwide. “It is the most widespread fighter jet in the world and many Nato members have it,” Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, had said the weekend before.

No mention was made of the Typhoons, which cost about £75m each. Giving some to Ukraine would present all sorts of complications, although Rishi Sunak has instructed the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, to see what can be done.

For his part, Wallace wasted little time in sounding sceptical, pointing out that the Typhoon is made by the four-country Eurofighter consortium, and so it would require not just Britain to agree to its use but also its partners Italy, Spain and Germany.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has already once ruled out sending fighter jets, and he has complained about western countries being in a “constant competition to outbid each other” in the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

Then there is the question of how many RAF Typhoons are available. The RAF has 137 on paper, and the 30 oldest, known as tranche 1, are due to be retired by 2025. Of these, 20 are operational and 10 are in storage.

Ukraine has asked for 200 fighters to help it defend its skies – more than the number of fighters available to the RAF (about 160) and closer in size to the French air force.

Experts say the Typhoon lacks combat requirements that Ukraine needs. The tranche 1 Typhoons are predominantly air-to-air fighters, and not much use for the close air support (ground bombing) missions that Ukraine would want to fly against entrenched Russian positions.

Read the full analysis by Dan Sabbagh here:

Uki Goñi

Immigration authorities in Argentina are cracking down on Russian women who since the invasion of Ukraine have started travelling to Buenos Aires to give birth in order to gain Argentinian citizenship for their children.

The director of Argentina’s immigration office, Florencia Carignano, said on Friday that a judicial investigation has been launched into what she described as a lucrative business that promises Argentinian passports for the Russian parents.

Carignano spoke after 33 expecting women – all between 32 and 34 weeks into their pregnancies – arrived on the same flight late on Thursday. Several of the women were initially turned away at passport control but were eventually let into the country.

While the concept of birth tourism isn’t new, Moscow’s isolation from the west as a result of the war has made Argentina, where Russians face no visa requirements, a popular destination for families looking to give their children the privileges of second citizenship.

Some 10,500 pregnant Russians have arrived in the South American country in the past year, Carignano said.

Carignano said in a Telenueve channel interview on Friday that “5,800 of them [were] in the last three months, many of them declaring they were in the 33rd or 34th week of pregnancy.”

The official said that about 7,000 of the women returned home after giving birth, leaving Argentinian lawyers charged with applying for Argentinian citizenship for the baby – and then the parents.

“The problem is that they arrive, have their children and then leave Argentina never to come back,” Carignano said.

We cannot allow them to shamelessly lie to us saying that they are tourists when they are not.

Read the full story here:

The latest intelligence update from the UK’s Ministry of Defence states that a key factor in the alleged termination of the Russian mercenary group’s prisoner recruitment drive is likely to be the “increasingly direct rivalry between the Russian ministry of defence and Wagner”.

Wagner founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Thursday that the group had “completely stopped” recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine.

The group began recruiting prisoners in Russia’s sprawling penal system last summer, offering convicts a pardon if they survived six months in Ukraine.

It has not provided information on how many convicts have joined its ranks, but Russian penal service figures published in November showed the country’s prison population had dropped by more than 20,000 between August and November, the largest fall in over a decade.

According to figures published in January, the decline had largely stopped. The UK ministry writes that the data suggests a drop-off in the rate of prisoner recruitment since December.

It adds:

News of the harsh realities of Wagner service in Ukraine has probably filtered through to inmates and reduced the number of volunteers. However, a key factor in the termination of the scheme is likely increasingly direct rivalry between the Russian Ministry of Defence and Wagner.

The Wagner group has played an increasingly prominent role in Russia’s war in Ukraine, spearheading a months-long assault on the town of Bakhmut.

The US intelligence community said in December that it believed Wagner had deployed 40,000 convict fighters in Ukraine, making up the vast majority of the group’s personnel in the country.

The MoD update goes on to say that the regular Russian military had “likely now also deployed the vast majority of the reservists called up under ‘partial mobilisation”.

The Russian leadership faces the difficult choice of either continuing to deplete its forces, scale back objectives, or conduct a further form of mobilisation.

Hello. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here, taking over the live blog from Adam Fulton to bring you the latest news from Ukraine. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.

Hello, I’m Adam Fulton and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Russia bombarded Ukraine in a large-scale attack on Friday, hitting several cities including Kyiv, the capital. Ukraine said Russian forces fired more than 100 missiles throughout the country and carried out 12 air and 20 shelling attacks, and that Ukraine shot down 61 missiles.

Kyiv said Russia struck power facilities in six regions, causing blackouts across most of Ukraine.

The attacks came a day after Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy ended a tour of European allies to lobby leaders for long-range weapons and fighter jets. Zelenskiy said: “London, Paris, Brussels – everywhere I spoke these past few days about how to strengthen our soldiers … We received good signals.”

In other developments as it approaches 9am in Kyiv:

• US president Joe Biden announced he would mark one year since Russia’s invasion by visiting Poland, Ukraine’s neighbour and Nato ally, on 20-22 February. “The president will make it very clear that the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” said John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House national security council.

• Two Russian cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and Romania, Ukraine said. Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said the Kalibr rockets crossed into Moldova at 10.18am local time on Friday. They then flew into Romania at 10.33am at the intersection of the state border before recrossing into western Ukraine, he said.

• Moldova confirmed at least one missile had overflown its airspace and summoned the Russian ambassador over the incident. It is not the first time Russia has sent its missiles into Moldova, with the conflict in danger of spilling out across the region. On Friday, Moldova’s pro-EU government resigned, adding to the sense of crisis.

• Romania’s foreign ministry categorically denied an incursion occurred. It said the Russian cruise missiles came to within 35km (22 miles) of the country’s north-eastern border but did not violate its territory.

• The US has “no indication” of a direct military threat by Russia to Moldova or Romania at this time, US state department spokesperson Vedant Patel said. “We maintain close contact and communication with our Moldovan partners and Romanian allies.”

• Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said 10 Russian missiles had been shot down over the capital in Russia’s wave of attacks and that sirens blared during the Friday morning rush hour, with weary civilians taking shelter. It was the first attack on the capital in two weeks.

• Ukraine has officially asked the Netherlands for F-16 fighter jets, its air force has said. The Dutch defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren, confirmed the request, saying: “We need to discuss the availability of the F-16 with the Americans and other allies.”

• Any decision to supply fighter jets to Ukraine must come from Nato, Poland’s prime minister said. Mateusz Morawiecki said “some countries” at an EU summit in Brussels did not agree with his proposals about deliveries of ammunition to Kyiv. He added that Poland was “not excluding” closing further border crossings with Belarus, citing “growing tensions”.

• Russia has launched a major offensive in eastern Ukraine and is trying to break through defences near the town of Kreminna, the governor for the Luhansk region said on Thursday. Serhiy Haidai said Russian troops had gone on the attack and were trying to advance westwards across a winter landscape of snow and forests. There had been “maximum escalation” and a big increase in shooting and shelling, he said.

• A group of 35 countries will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to Lithuania’s sports minister, Jurgita Šiugždinienė. The International Olympic Committee recently moved away from having an outright ban on athletes from Russia and Belarus and is investigating ways they can qualify for the Olympics under a neutral flag.

• Marina Ovsyannikova, the former Russian state TV editor who interrupted a live news broadcast to protest against the start of the Ukraine war, has described her “chaotic” escape from house arrest in Moscow and how she fled across Europe to seek asylum in France.
  With contributions from Reuters and Agence France-Presse