Selenskyi wants to take action against government misconduct and corruption in his own ranks. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Wagner boss Prigozhin continues to lose respect in the Kremlin. Putin is therefore relying more on the Russian military. what happened in the night
After months of apparent rise, the “Institute for the Study of War” is now observing the decline of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Kremlin. According to war experts, Prigozhin lost respect in the Kremlin and with Putin because he and his mercenary force failed to capture Bakhmut. They had previously promised this.
Because the Russian army failed to capture Bakhmut and suffered heavy casualties, Putin is said to have approached Prigozhin ally and Russian army general Sergey Surovikin to have the Wagner mercenaries capture Bakhmut. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry is said to have turned its attention to mobilizing Russian reservists and conscripts and creating better conditions for Russia’s conventional military.
Before that, Putin should give Prigozhin and Surovikin the chance to prove themselves in Bakhmut with their mobilized prisoners. Since the Wagner mercenaries could not take Bakhmut and the airstrikes did little more than inflict suffering on the Ukrainian civilian population and deplete stocks of Russian precision missiles, both efforts failed. Nevertheless, Prigozhin had made a lot of publicity about himself and staged himself as a war hero in Russia during the conquest of Soledar.
Therefore, according to the ISW, Putin seems to have decided to stop relying on Prigozhin and instead put more trust in the Russian Defense Ministry under Shoigu and the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerassimov. As early as December, Putin began centralizing control of the war effort under the Russian defense minister.
According to the ISW analysis, Putin felt threatened by Prigozhin’s self-portrayal and tried more and more to present himself as a committed war leader again. He also tried to minimize the Wagner chief’s influence on State Duma officials.
Following the corruption scandals in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced more decisive action against misconduct in the state apparatus. “Society will get all the information, and the state will take the necessary powerful steps,” Zelensky said in his nightly video message broadcast in Kyiv on Sunday. Among other things, he informed that the detained Deputy Minister for Municipal, Territory and Infrastructure Development Vasyl Lozynskyi had been released.
What it’s about: According to the media, Lozynskyi took a $400,000 bribe to buy generators to help deal with the country’s energy crisis. With his video message, Zelenskyj also reacted to media reports about the overpriced purchase of food for soldiers. Prices are said to have been paid three times higher than in retail. Here, too, civil servants are said to have enriched themselves. According to official information, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov is to be heard in front of the parliament in Kyiv.
Corruption is a widespread problem in Ukraine, as in many countries of the former Soviet Union, which is why there are repeated fears that aid money from the West will seep away down opaque channels. Many citizens believe that the country’s leadership enriches itself with financial aid in the course of humanitarian aid.
Zelenskyi announced decisions for the coming week that have already been taken but have not yet been published in order to further combat corruption and enrichment in office. “I’m grateful to the journalists who deal with the facts and create the whole picture,” he said of the revelations.
For a victory against Russia, the Ukrainian leadership urgently needs hundreds of battle tanks, but also military aircraft. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has announced that he will, if necessary, deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without Germany’s consent. He told the PAP news agency on Sunday: “We will not stand by and watch Ukraine bleed dry. Ukraine and Europe will win this war – with or without Germany.”
If there is no early agreement with Germany, Poland will form a “smaller coalition” with other countries. These countries would then begin supplying some of their Leopard tanks to Ukraine without German approval. Actually, the approval of Germany is necessary for this. Morawiecki published a similar statement in English on Twitter.
At his meeting with Johnson in Kyiv, Zelenskyy reiterated calls for his country to join NATO to protect it from Russian aggression. Membership in the alliance is the “best security guarantee” for the country, said the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak. It is important to actively promote the goal of NATO membership.
Russian President Vladimir Putin cited Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO as one of the reasons for the war. Moscow had always mentioned Kiev’s renunciation of membership in the military alliance as a condition for resolving the conflict. Nuclear power Russia claims to see its security threatened by a possible NATO presence in Ukraine.
The foreign ministers of the EU states want to discuss the latest developments in the war in Ukraine this Monday (10:00 a.m.) in Brussels. Ministers are expected to agree that an additional EUR 500 million can be made available to supply arms and equipment to the Ukrainian armed forces. This would increase the total amount approved so far by the EU to 3.5 billion euros.
According to an EU official, an additional 45 million euros is also at stake for the new EU training mission for Ukrainian armed forces. It is intended to enable Ukrainian soldiers to defend themselves even better against the attackers from Russia. For Germany, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) is expected to attend the meeting in Brussels.
In addition, this Monday the Bundeswehr will begin moving the first two of the three promised Patriot anti-aircraft missile squadrons from Germany to Poland. They are intended to help protect Polish airspace and strengthen NATO’s eastern flank. The laying begins in Gnoien (Rostock district). The anti-aircraft systems are to move into operational positions in the vicinity of the city of Zamość in south-eastern Poland. From there it is around 60 kilometers to the Ukrainian border and 110 kilometers to the Ukrainian city of Lviv.
