Russia-Ukraine war live: Russians ‘eradicating towns’ in eastern Donbas as battles ‘heat up’ | Ukraine

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, worked for Soviet intelligence while living in Switzerland in the 1970s, according to reports.

Citing declassified archives, Swiss newspapers Sonntagszeitung and Le Matin Dimanche reported that a Swiss police file “confirms that ‘Monsignor Kirill,’ as he is referred to in this document, worked for the KGB”.

The papers said they had gained access to the file in the Swiss national archives.

Kirill, leader of Russia’s dominant religious group, lived in Geneva in the early 1970s, officially as a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church at the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Under the code name “Mikhailov,” Kirill’s mission was to influence the council, already infiltrated by the KGB, the papers reported.

The Soviet objective was to push the Council to denounce the US and its allies, and to tone down its criticism of the lack of religious freedoms in the Soviet Union, the archives show.

Peter Beaumont

Russian forces are attempting to tie down Ukrainian forces with fighting in the eastern Donbas region as Moscow assembles additional troops there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, perhaps targeting the Luhansk region, Ukraine has said.

Weeks of intense fighting continued to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said.

Moscow’s forces are located in the Donetsk region, which with neighbouring Luhansk makes up the Donbas region, an industrial area bordering Russia. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, said:

The battles for the region are heating up. The Russians are throwing new units into the battle and eradicating our towns and villages.

Russian forces are “throwing” new units in the eastern Donbas region ahead of an expected offensive in the coming weeks, according to Ukrainian officials.

Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the battles for the Donetsk region are heating up, adding that Russian forces are “eradicating our towns and villages”.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said shelling there had subsided because “the Russians have been saving ammunition for a large-scale offensive”.

Weeks of intense fighting continue to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said.

Donald McRae

As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, the world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk talks about the devastation of war and searching for signs of hope:

The walls were shaking and the dogs were hiding,” Usyk says quietly, a few hours after another wave of Russian bombs hits Kyiv on a mid-winter morning.

The world heavyweight champion is hard at work in his training camp outside the capital as he prepares for his planned unification bout with Tyson Fury in the coming months. But the greedy machinations of boxing matter little when set against the war in Ukraine.

Usyk, who looks lean and fit as he tugs thoughtfully at his close-cropped beard, wears a pristine white T-shirt. A beautiful black and white photograph of Muhammad Ali is printed on the front. The old promise of “float like a butterfly” ripples below the photo and Usyk grins while Ali dances across my Zoom screen. A friend gave him the shirt for his 36th birthday on 17 January, but a Ukrainian flag, signed with messages for the champion by soldiers on the frontline, hangs behind him in a reminder that he is on the edge of a war zone.

“I am outside Kyiv but my wife and my kids felt the attack this morning,” he says of the heavy shelling. “But, thank God, everything is fine with the family.”

Usyk used to be a joker, playing pranks in the gym and peppering interviews with quips, but he now carries the gravity of a country under siege. He leans forward, his head almost touching the screen, when I suggest it must be hard being away from his family when Kyiv is bombarded again.

“It’s not that difficult,” he says calmly.

The anxiety starts but people are prepared. They’re all thinking: ‘These dogs launched bombs or started shooting at us again.’ They are used to it so our people live with it. They go down into the bomb shelters where they can be safe.

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Germany expects that it will soon have sufficient commitments from other EU countries to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, a German government spokesperson said.

Berlin has promised 14 of its own Leopard 2A6 tanks for Ukraine’s war effort, and has given partner countries permission to re-export further battle tanks to Kyiv. It hopes to assemble two full battalions of Leopard tanks in cooperation with other EU countries.

“Germany’s commitment stands,” the government spokesperson Wolfgang Büchner said today. He did not name any specific countries that had so far committed to sending the German-made tanks.