NATO has announced it will deliver more Western heavy weapons to Ukraine, at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin sees a “positive dynamic” for his troops on the front lines.
On the ground, rescuers worked to find survivors among the ruins of a building in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine, hit the day before by an attack that killed at least 30 people.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg judged this Sunday that Putin “overestimated the strength of his own forces.” “We have seen his mistakes, his lack of confidence, leadership problems, poor equipment,” he told the German newspaper Handelsblatt.
“We are in a decisive phase of the war,” Stoltenberg said. “So it is important that we give Ukraine the weapons it needs,” he added.
“The recent promises of heavy weapons equipment are important, and I look forward to more in the near future,” he said.
The NATO chief is scheduled to meet on January 20 with the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group, which coordinates the supply of weapons to kyiv, at the Ramstein airbase in Germany.
Ukraine has pushed hard for heavy weapons, including tanks, but the West has been reticent for fear of being directly involved in the war or provoking Russia.
However, since the beginning of the month, France, Germany and the United States have promised to send French AMX-10 RC tanks, 40 German Marder infantry carriers and 50 American Bradley armored vehicles.
“According to Plans”
The UK promised on Saturday to supply 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine “in the coming weeks”, making it the first country to send such heavy equipment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed London’s decision, which “will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also sends the right signal to other partners.”
Russian diplomacy reacted to the announcement by assuring that the decision will only “intensify” the conflict, “generating more victims, including among the civilian population.”
kyiv’s allies had already delivered nearly 300 modernized Soviet armor, but never Western-made heavy tanks.
At a time when his army seems to be having difficulties against the Ukrainian forces, Vladimir Putin assured that “everything is going according to plan” in an interview with Russian public television.
“The dynamics are positive and everything is developing according to the plans of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. I hope that our fighters give us more joy with their military results,” he declared, after a question from a journalist from the Rossia-1 channel about ” the news of Soledar”, which the Russian army said on Friday it had conquered.
Dozens of missing
The capture of this modest town was presented in Moscow as a victory after months of setbacks in Ukraine, in particular the withdrawal from the Kharkov region (east) and the city of Kherson (south) before the Ukrainian counteroffensives.
According to the Russian army, the conquest of Soledar, where there are huge galleries that would allow it to store military material and infiltrate behind enemy lines, is an important stage to surround the neighboring city of Bakhmut, which Moscow has been trying to take for months.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian authorities again denied Moscow’s announcement and claimed to have “under control” the city of Soledar, which had 10,000 inhabitants before the Russian offensive and is now destroyed.
A new wave of shelling hit several cities on Saturday and Sunday, including Dnipro in the east, where a residential building was destroyed. These attacks occurred at the height of the Orthodox New Year celebrations.
“So far the enemy attack has already cost 30 lives. Between 30 and 40 people are still under the rubble,” Natalia Babachenko, chief adviser of the military administration of the Dnipropetrovsk region, told national television on Sunday.
More than 70 people were injured, a dozen seriously, according to the military administration.
The United States denounced “a new example of the brutal war waged by Russia against the Ukrainian people.” A spokesman for the National Security Council assured that the United States “will continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend itself.”
“Russian Horror”
In the south, in Kryvyi Rig, one person died and another was injured on Saturday after the shelling against residential buildings, according to an official balance.
This Sunday, the Russian forces bombarded Kherson, reaching the infrastructures and the offices of the Red Cross, with a balance of seven wounded, one of them seriously, according to the regional governor Yaroslav Yanuchevich.
“The world must stop this evil,” said Zelensky, who denounced “Russian terror.”