Notes

The UK government's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
I welcome the clear support of the Prime Minister and his government for #Sweden’s #NATO membership. Ukraine’s headquarters for prisoners swaps was gathering information, he added. In a statement it said the “enemy” carried out “special informational operations” to try and destabilise Ukrainian society. Hungary has signalled that it may lift its veto at a summit of EU leaders on Ukraine scheduled for Feb 1, having opposed the aid package at a December meeting. Laszlo Toroczkai, leader of the Our Homeland party, also claimed the Zakarpattia region, where 150,000 ethnic Hungarians live, and said it should become part of Hungary if Russia annexes Ukraine after the war. “If this war ends up with Ukraine losing its statehood, because this is also on the cards, then as the only Hungarian party taking this position, let me signal that we lay claim to Transcarpathia,” he said.


A Russian pensioner has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for sharing a post on social media about the casualties suffered by the armed forces in Ukraine. In Rostov, governor Vasily Golubev said a drone was downed over a campsite in the Neklinovsky district, which borders eastern Ukraine. “There are battles taking place near this locality,” ground forces spokesman Volodymyr Fityo said, admitting that the Russian army was “trying to advance in all directions”. The ministry said the settlement of Tabaivka, home to 34 people, was “liberated” and under Russian control.

How will the UK respond to the Ukrainian invasion?
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has since advised all UK citizens to leave the country, but it is not known how many remain and the FCDO has declined to comment on numbers. There are also 53 entities on the sanctions list, which mainly covers Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine but also includes a number of companies and the five Russian banks added on Tuesday. Since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the UK has sanctioned around 183 individuals under the Russia sanctions regime. When that failed, No.10 sanctioned five Russian banks and three “hit net wealth” individuals. Russian president Vladimir Putin wants to assert his power over the neighbouring country of Ukraine because he believes they should both be under the same sphere of influence, as they were both part of the Soviet Union in the 20th Century.


Russia’s actions have drawn widespread condemnation from the West, including from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who addressed the UK with a televised statement on Thursday.

Ukraine-Russia war live: Russia 'captures Ukrainian village'
"A frank and constructive dialogue is expected to improve relations between states," the Ukrainian president's office said on its official channel on the Telegram messaging app alongside a photo of Mr Szijjarto, Mr Kuleba and Mr Yermak. Peter Szijjarto has arrived in Ukraine for talks with senior officials today. This could see states like Poland and the Baltics decide to aid Ukraine on their own, which "might leave NATO's eastern front vulnerable and cause a crisis within the EU and European NATO". "The nightmare scenario would be that the states close to Russia double down on aid to Ukraine while those farther west decide to force a deal on Putin's terms. Then Europe itself could fracture," he says. A senior European Union official has denied member states are discussing financial coercion to force Hungary to agree on financing for Ukraine. Considering they have been accused of using nuclear and chemical agents in the UK, it might have been assumed the Russians wouldn't follow international rules on the battlefield, but the Ukraine conflict appears to have confirmed it.

Although the UK has no troops stationed in Ukraine, it has contributed resources to Nato’s presence in the wider region. Ukraine's intelligence service, the SBU, reported on Tuesday it had found and deactivated "two robotic online surveillance cameras" that it says were hacked by Russia to spy on Kyiv's defences and scout out targets. Russian military vehicles are reported to have breached Ukraine's border in a number of places, in the north, south and east, including from Belarus. The ministry said the settlement of Tabaivka, home to 34 people, was “liberated” and under Russian control. In a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky early on Thursday morning, Mr Johnson vowed the West "would not stand by as President Putin waged his campaign against the Ukrainian people".
This is because Nato uses a system of collective security, whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party. If Ukraine was part of Nato, the military alliance which is made up of 30 member states, including the US and UK, every Nato nation would have to launch an armed attack against Russia. A Russian MP, Andrei Kartapolov, began expanding on the statement almost immediately, even suggesting Ukraine might have used a Patriot missile to hit the Ilyushin plane.

What does the Ukraine war mean for the UK? How Russia invasion and Putin sanctions can affect life in UK
The fear is that if Russia is allowed to invade Ukraine unresisted, that might act as a signal to other leaders that the days of Western powers intervening in other conflicts are over. Some migrants might stay in neighbouring Poland and eastern European countries, but some might head further west and eventually end up in the UK. Russia wants Nato to make a legally binding promise that Ukraine will never become a member. It also wants Nato to withdraw its forces from most Eastern European countries. It is called self-determination, and perhaps the most important aspect of this principle is that borders cannot be changed by invading armies.

It is extremely unlikely that the UK will go to war with Russia any time soon. Mr Zelenskyy has called for public officials to disclose their incomes to increase transparency and eliminate corruption as Ukraine tries to meet the stringent requirements for its bid to join the European Union. A large diversion of citizens to military duty would leave gaps in the workforce to be filled, be it guarding food warehouses or building trenches and bomb shelters. The deployment of the Storm Shadow cruise missiles mark a significant step-up in the capabilities of arms the UK has sent to Ukraine.
Ukraine said on Friday that Russia had returned the bodies of 77 soldiers, the AFP news agency reports, days after the crash of a Russian military transport plane threw doubt on the future of such exchanges. Joe Biden will host the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at the White House on 9 February to discuss aid to Ukraine. This comes as the US president has been pressing Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with aid for Ukraine. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid.


Moscow had aimed to seize control of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, soon after launching its invasion. But Ukrainian forces pushed back advancing Russian troops, who have routinely shelled the city since. That means using different kinds of missiles - hypersonic, cruise, and ballistic - but also firing these missiles along different routes. These weapons can change direction in the air over Ukraine, causing further headaches for air defence.


The decline in manufacturing means there are far fewer factories that can be converted to make arms, as happened in the Second World War, when car makers churned out Spitfire parts. And in https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-shouldnt-ukraine-bomb-the-convoy.html , many industries that are key in wartime rely on imports. Key bridges could be dynamited, airport runways blocked, and beaches sown with landmines.


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