Russia-Ukraine updates: Macron to send light tanks to Ukraine

The United States is looking at ways to target Iranian drone production through sanctions and export controls, and is talking to private companies whose parts have been used in production, the White House has said.

“We are assessing further steps we can take in terms of export controls to restrict Iran’s access to technologies used in drones,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

The US has previously imposed sanctions on companies and people it accused of producing or transferring Iranian drones that Russia has used to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

McDonald’s Corp is set to abandon Kazakhstan as disruptions triggered by the Ukraine crisis have left the nation without a substitute for Russian meat supplies, Bloomberg News has reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The fast-food giant, which exited Russia in May, banned its local franchisee from procuring meat patties from Russian suppliers, the report said.

McDonald’s declined to comment on the report.

The company’s licensee in Kazakhstan was forced to temporarily close its restaurants in November after cutting ties with Russian companies and running out of supplies, three sources with knowledge of situation had told the Reuters news agency.

Zelenskyy has thanked Macron for deciding to send light tanks to Ukraine, the Ukrainian leader said on Twitter.

The weapons will be the first Western-made tanks supplied to Ukraine’s army, the French presidential office said.

The AMX-10 RC tanks are “very mobile”, “perhaps old but high-performance”, an adviser in the French defence ministry said.

Paris has already delivered rocket launchers, air defence missile systems, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, and armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine.

Heavy fighting around the largely ruined, Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut is likely to persist for the foreseeable future, and the outcome is uncertain as Russians make incremental progress, according to a senior US administration official.

France’s Macron told Zelenskyy his government would send light AMX-10 RC armoured combat vehicles to help in the war against Russia, a French official said after a phone call between the two leaders.

“This is the first time that Western-made armoured vehicles are being delivered in support of the Ukrainian army,” the official said.

Speaking to reporters, the official did not give any details about the volume or timing of the planned shipments but said talks would continue regarding the potential delivery of other vehicle types.

The French-made AMX-10 is an armed reconnaissance vehicle with high mobility, which carries four people, according to the French armed forces ministry website.

Russia says Italy is not an “honest broker” or possible mediator in peace talks with Ukraine due to its position against Moscow.

“Obviously, given the partisan position taken by Italy, we cannot regard it as either an ‘honest broker’ or a possible guarantor of the peace process,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

She added that it is “strange” for Moscow to hear proposals for mediation from countries that took “an unequivocal and very aggressive anti-Russian position” since the very beginning of its “special military operation” in Ukraine last February.

Zakharova added that some countries pursue “selfish goals” with the intent of being involved in the negotiation process to receive “foreign policy dividends”.

“It would be better if the European pseudo-peacekeepers stopped the military support of Kyiv and focused their efforts on more firm and demanding work with the President of Ukraine Zelenskyy”, she said, referring to Zelenskyy previously saying he would not negotiate with Putin.

Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the Czech government approved a draft law changing defence spending to align with the NATO alliance pledge of at least 2 percent of GDP from 2024.

The legislation, which needs lawmakers’ approval, is reacting to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February.

Like most other NATO members, the Czech Republic has long missed a target of spending 2 percent of its GDP on defence.

In 2023, defence spending is forecast at 1.52 percent of GDP.

“We want this [2 percent] obligation … to be anchored in legislation,” Fiala said.

“Strengthening security and defence abilities are long-term government priorities, which are important, especially at this time, when Russia started the war in Ukraine,” he said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz supports defence minister Christine Lambrecht following a controversial video on New Year’s Eve, a government spokesman said.

Lambrecht published a video on Instagram talking about the challenges of 2022, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, while fireworks and explosions went off in the background.

She has been widely accused of insensitivity, with opposition politicians even calling on her to resign.

But asked if Scholz had complete confidence in Lambrecht, deputy government spokesman Wolfgang Buchner told reporters, “Yes, of course.”

“The chancellor works well and in a spirit of trust with all his cabinet colleagues. And of course, that also applies to the minister mentioned.”

The city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine held out against a Russian siege and continual bombardment for two months before it was taken over by Russian forces in May. Many of its residents fled.

Ulvi Zulfili was one of them. He left his home country, Azerbaijan, as a child because of one conflict and then was displaced by another in his adopted country of Ukraine. Now he is trying to rebuild his life again in Kyiv in the midst of near-daily air raid sirens.

Read more about Zulfili here.

Ukraine’s efforts to increase grain exports are focused on faster inspections of ships rather than including more ports in the initiative, a senior Ukrainian official said.

Three leading Ukrainian Black Sea ports in the Odesa region were unblocked in July under an initiative between Moscow and Kyiv, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.

Under the deal, all ships are inspected by joint teams in the Bosphorus.

But Kyiv accuses Russia of slowly carrying out inspections that cause weeks of delay and reduce the supply of Ukrainian grain to foreign markets.

“Ukraine focuses on normalising inspections rather than opening new ports,” the senior Ukrainian official said.

The official added: “Why open the port of Mykolaiv if, at the current rate of exports, we can close half of the ports of Odesa, which are already open?”

Zelenskyy has spoken with his Romanian counterpart, Klaus Iohannis, about developing their nations’ defence ties, the Ukrainian president says on Telegram.

“Together with Klaus Iohannis, we agreed on steps to further develop Ukrainian-Romanian cooperation, primarily in the defence sector,” Zelenskyy wrote. “I thanked Romania for its solidarity and support in resisting Russian aggression.”

Putin plans to talk to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells the Interfax news agency.

Turkey acted as a mediator alongside the UN in 2022 to set up a deal allowing grain exports from Ukrainian ports.

Here are four maps we update daily to chart the latest war developments:

European companies who work in Russia must be labelled “supporters [of] the war”, an adviser to Zelenskyy, Mikhailo Podolyak, says.

“European Union companies, including pharmaceutical ones, which continue to work in the RF [Russian Federation], must be labeled: ‘supports the war’, ‘supports the mass murder of Ukrainians’, ‘supports the destruction of critical infrastructure’,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter. “That’s fair. Financing the war with European taxes is inadmissible”.

Germany is looking for additional ways to help Ukraine protect its people and infrastructure, its foreign minister said, stressing that any dip in Europe’s resolve on the issue would serve as a win for Moscow.

“And this year, we must protect and further develop the joint European unity that made us strong last year,” Baerbock said during a news conference with her Portuguese counterpart in Lisbon.

Putin has sent a warship towards the Atlantic and Indian oceans armed with new hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles, which he said were unique worldwide.

In a video conference with defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Igor Krokhmal, commander of the frigate named Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov, Putin said the ship was armed with Zircon hypersonic weapons.

“This time the ship is equipped with the latest hypersonic missile system – Zircon – which has no analogues,” said Putin.

“I would like to wish the crew of the ship success in their service for the good of the motherland”.

Shoigu added that the hypersonic missiles, known as either Tsirkon or Zircon, could overcome any missile defence system.

The missiles fly at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of more than 1,000km, Shoigu said.

The Ukrainian foreign minister says that Patriot air defence systems are expected to be deployed in Ukraine soon.

In a briefing broadcast on the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s Facebook page, Dmytro Kuleba said preparations for transferring the Patriot air defence systems have already begun.

On December 21, US President Joe Biden announced a $1.85bn military aid package for Ukraine, including a Patriot missile defence system, during a joint news conference with Zelenskyy.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal added that Kyiv expects the US Congress to approve another package of almost $45bn, which includes new HIMARS multiple rocket launcher systems and the Patriot air defence systems.

Ukraine wants the United Nations to send peacekeepers to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to establish a safety zone, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear power company said.

This is the first time a nuclear official has publicly suggested peacekeepers should be deployed without an agreement with Russia to create a safety zone at the plant.

Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom, said the absence of a deal means the UN Security Council should deploy peacekeepers.

“The problem is there is no solution (at) the level of IAEA,” Kotin told Reuters news agency in an online interview from his office in Kyiv on Tuesday.

“The process is not going forward. We would propose to bring this problem to the next level,” he said.

He added that a peacekeeping force would be a way to end Russian control of the plant.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock says that the EU had tried everything to stop the war in Ukraine but that Putin had nothing on his mind but to destroy Ukraine.

Speaking at a conference in Portugal’s capital Lisbon, Baerbock said Putin’s stance was why it was “important to keep up the delivery of weapons so Ukraine can defend itself and protect people’s lives”.

A former Russian deputy prime minister has sent a piece of shrapnel from a French howitzer to President Emmanuel Macron.

“In this envelope along with my letter you will see a fragment of a shell from a French 155-mm French artillery piece Caesar,” Dmitry Rogozin said in his open letter to France’s ambassador to Moscow, Pierre Levy, published on Telegram.

“It punctured my right shoulder and lodged in the fifth cervical vertebra only a millimetre away from killing me or rendering me an invalid,” he wrote.

He said the incident occurred last month during a “work meeting” in a hotel restaurant in Donetsk.

“I ask that you give the fragment cut out of my spine by surgeons to French President Emmanuel Macron,” Rogozin wrote.

“And tell him that no one will escape responsibility for war crimes,” he added, accusing Western powers.

The Belarusian news outlet, NEXTA, has also published pictures of the piece of shrapnel and the letter on Twitter.