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Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Russia plans ‘major changes’ in armed forces from 2023 to 2026

MOSCOW, RUSSIA – MAY 04: A Russian T-14 Armata tank participates in a Victory Day Parade night rehearsal on Tverskaya street on May 4, 2022 in Moscow, Russia. The holiday, a remembrance of Russians who died in World War II and victory over the Nazis, takes on added significance this year as Russia continues to pursue its war against Ukraine. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)

Oleg Nikishin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Russia said on Tuesday that its armed forces would undergo “major changes” from 2023 to 2026, including changes in its composition and administrative reforms.

The defense ministry said that the changes would happen as Russia boosts the number of its military personnel to 1.5 million.

“Only by strengthening the key structural components of the Armed Forces is it possible to guarantee the military security of the state and protect new entities and critical facilities of the Russian Federation,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

— Reuters

Putin has told new army commander to seize Donbas region by March, official claims

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov attend an annual meeting of the Defense Ministry Board in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 21, 2022.

Mikhail Kuravlev | Sputnik | Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly instructed the new commander of Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine to seize the eastern Donbas region by March.

Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, told the domestic Freedom TV channel that Putin had ordered Gen. Valery Gerasimov, a Putin loyalist and head of Russia’s armed forces, to seize the region within months.

“Putin does not pay attention to reality, that is why he has not changed his global goals: the destruction of Ukrainians as a people, a separate nation and the destruction of Ukraine as an independent state,” he said, according to comments translated and reported by news agency Ukrinform.

Adding that the priority for Russia was capturing the Donbas (an aim openly and often stated by Moscow), Yusov said Gerasimov had been set a timeline for doing so, noting “this goal is to seize Donbas and form a security zone there, but already by March.”

Gerasimov was appointed as the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine last week as Russian forces have made few advances in recent months, instead becoming caught in attritional combat in Donetsk, particularly around Bakhmut where intense fighting has continued for months.

Yusov said Russia had previously set deadlines for capturing parts of Ukraine but that each time, these had been postponed. CNBC was unable to verify the information in Yusov’s comments.

— Holly Ellyatt

Soledar shouldn’t be considered lost yet but Bakhmut is Russia’s next target, official says

Ukraine says its forces are continuing to fight in the Donetsk town of Soledar, which Russia claimed to have fully captured last week, and said Russian forces are trying to move toward nearby Bakhmut, which is seen as their larger target in the region.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, commented on national television on Monday that “eastern Ukraine remains the main target of the aggressor’s attack.”

“The enemy focused the main efforts on the Bakhmut direction, especially near Soledar, where battles are raging. Ukrainian units continue holding the defense in the city itself and its outskirts,” Cherevatyi said, according to comments reported by news agency Ukrinform.

Soledar cannot be considered to have been captured by Russia, he said, as battles for the city are still underway.

“Our armed forces are making every effort to make them [Russian forces] pay an incredible price for every inch they are trying to move over,” Cherevatyi said.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War noted in an update Monday that Russian forces made additional territorial gains north of Bakhmut and may be intensifying attacks south of the city, near Klishchiivka.

Maxar satellite imagery of bombed out apartment buildings and homes in Soledar, Ukraine.

Maxar | Maxar | Getty Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday evening that he had received the latest briefings from commanders and intelligence chiefs regarding the war.

“The situation in the Donetsk direction was considered separately and in detail. Soledar, Bakhmut and other cities against which Russia has concentrated its last most prepared forces,” he said. “We also reviewed the situation on the southern front. We see what Russia is preparing,” he said, providing no further details.

— Holly Ellyatt

Top U.S. general visits training site for Ukrainian soldiers

Monday was just Day Two for Ukrainian soldiers at the U.S. military’s new training program, but the message was coming through loud and clear.

These are urgent times. And the lessons they will get in the next five weeks on weapons, armored vehicles and more sophisticated combat techniques are critical as they prepare to defend their country against the Russian invasion.

“This is not a run of the mill rotation,” U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday afternoon as he met with commanders. “This is one of those moments in time where if you want to make a difference, this is it.”

Milley, who visited the sprawling Grafenwoehr training area to get his first look at the new, so-called combined arms instruction, has said it will better prepare Ukrainian troops to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks.

He spent a bit less than two hours at “Camp Kherson” — a section of the base named after a city in Ukraine where Ukrainian troops scored a key victory against Russia last year. More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the expanded training program at the camp just a day before Milley arrived.

— The Associated Press

Death toll in Dnipro missile strike rises to 40

Rescuers remove the rubble and search for people at an apartment block hit by a rocket launched by Russian occupiers during a massive missile attack on Ukraine Saturday, January 14, Dnipro, central Ukraine.

Mykola Miakshykov | Future Publishing | Getty Images

The death toll from a weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to 40, authorities said Monday, as Western analysts pointed to indications the Kremlin was preparing for a drawn-out war in Ukraine after almost 11 months of fighting.

About 1,700 people lived in the multi-story building, and search and rescue crews have worked nonstop since Saturday’s strike to locate victims and survivors in the wreckage. The regional administration said 39 people have been rescued so far and 30 more remained missing. Authorities said at least 75 were wounded.

Rescuers work on a residential building destroyed after a missile strike, in Dnipro on January 16, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Vitalii Matokha | AFP | Getty Images

The reported death toll made it the deadliest single attack on Ukrainian civilians since before the summer, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. Residents said the apartment tower did not house any military facilities.

This photograph taken on January 14, 2023 shows a destroyed car and a residential building that were destroyed by a missile strike in Dnipro. 

Vitalii Matokha | AFP | Getty Images

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the strike, and others like it, “inhumane aggression” because it directly targeted civilians. “There will be no impunity for these crimes,” he said in a tweet Sunday.

Asked about the strike Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military doesn’t target residential buildings and suggested the Dnipro building was hit as a result of Ukrainian air defense actions.

— Associated Press

Ukraine prepares for attacks near border with Russian-ally Belarus

Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko (C) attends a joint exercise of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus at a firing range near Osipovichi outside Minsk, on Feb. 17, 2022.

Maxim Guchek | Afp | Getty Images

Ukraine is growing increasingly prepared for an attack near its border with Belarus, according to NBC News.

Belarus and Russia began joint military exercises on Monday. That’s elevated concerns that Russia will launch a new ground offensive near the Belarus-Ukraine border as it did in February, NBC News reported.

NBC News spoke to one Ukrainian solider who described the need to be on high alert as an attack could come anywhere within in a span of thousands of miles along the border.

Read more here.

Polish PM to Germany: send Ukraine all weapons, including tanks

A new Leopard 2 A7V heavy battle tank, one of the tanks that Ukraine has requested from Germany.

Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Germany should send Ukraine all the weapons it needs to defend itself against Russia’s invasion, including tanks.

Delivering the keynote speech at a ceremony marking former conservative Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaueble’s half-century in parliament, he implicitly criticised Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s reluctance to send heavier weaponry.

“I call for decisive actions by the German government,” he said, to applause from gathered, mostly conservative, German legislators. “For all sorts of weapons to be delivered. The battle for freedom and our future is raging as we speak… Tanks must not be left in storehouses, but placed in their hands.”

— Reuters

Latvia’s president says Western world must help Ukraine resist Russia

Latvia’s President Egils Levits said it’s important to maintain support for Ukraine as the war with Russia continues.

“The first reason is that the international community should keep the standard of international law, which is provided for in the Charter of the United Nations from 1945, and we cannot afford to lower this standard,” he told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche in Davos, Switzerland.

“Therefore all states that have committed to peaceful order in the world should commit to helping Ukraine resist this unlawful attack,” he added.

Latvia — which itself declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, shortly before its collapse — has been, and remains, a staunch ally of Ukraine. Levits said Russia’s invasion was the “gravest violation of the sovereignty of a democratic state” and that solidarity between democracies was vital.

“I think all states which are lawful and which want to keep the standard of international law, there is only one decision and that is to support Ukraine.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Read CNBC’s previous live coverage here:

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