NATO announces it will deliver more heavy weapons to Ukraine

Kiev, Ukraine: NATO announced on Sunday that it will deliver more Western heavy weapons to Ukraine, at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin sees a "positive dynamic" for his troops on the front lines.

On the ground, rescuers were working to find survivors in the ruins of a building in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine, hit the day before by an attack that killed at least 30 people.

NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that Putin "overestimated the strength of his own forces." "We have seen their mistakes, their lack of confidence, the leadership problems, the poor equipment," he told German newspaper Handelsblatt.

"We are in a decisive phase of the war," Stoltenberg said. "So it is important that we hand over to Ukraine the weapons it needs," he added.

"The recent promises of heavy weapons equipment are important, and I expect more in the near future," he said.

The NATO chief is scheduled to meet on January 20 with the Contact Group for the Defense of Ukraine, which coordinates the supply of weapons to Kiev, at the Ramstein air base in Germany.

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Ukraine has pushed hard for heavy weapons, including tanks, but the West has been reluctant for fear of being directly involved in the war or provoking Russia.

However, since the beginning of the month, France, Germany and the United States have promised to send French AMX-10 RC tanks, 40 German Marder infantry carriers and 50 American Bradley armored vehicles.

"According to plan"

The UK on Saturday promised to supply "in the coming weeks" 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, making it the first country to ship such heavy material.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed London's decision, which "will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also sends the right signal to other partners."

Russian diplomacy reacted to the announcement by assuring that the decision will only "intensify" the conflict, "generating more victims, including among the civilian population."

Kiev's allies had already delivered nearly 300 modernized Soviet armored vehicles, but never Western-made heavy tanks.

At a time when his army appears to be struggling with Ukrainian forces, Vladimir Putin said "everything is going according to plan" in an interview with Russian public television, broadcast Sunday.

"The dynamic is positive and everything is developing according to the plans of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. I hope that our fighters will give us more joy with their military results," he said, after a question from a journalist from the Rossia-1 channel about "the news of Soledar", which the Russian army said on Friday it had conquered.

Dozens missing

The capture of this modest town was presented in Moscow as a victory after months of setbacks in Ukraine, in particular the withdrawal of the Kharkov region (east) and the city of Kherson (south) in the face of Ukrainian counteroffensives.

According to the Russian army, the conquest of Soledar, where there are huge galleries that would allow to store military equipment and infiltrate behind enemy lines, is an important stage to surround the neighboring city of Bakhmut, which Moscow has been trying to take for months.

On Saturday, Ukrainian authorities again denied Moscow's announcement and claimed to have "under control" the city of Soledar, which had 10,000 inhabitants before the Russian offensive and is now destroyed.

A new wave of shelling hit several towns on Saturday and Sunday, including Dnipro in the east, where a residential building was destroyed. These attacks occurred in the midst of Orthodox New Year celebrations.

"At the moment the enemy attack has already cost 30 lives. Between 30 and 40 people are still under the rubble," Natalia Babachenko, chief adviser of the military administration of the Dnipropetrovsk region, told national television on Sunday.

More than 70 people were injured, a dozen of them seriously, according to the military administration.

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The United States denounced "a new example of the brutal war waged by Russia against the Ukrainian people." A spokesman for the National Security Council said the United States "will continue to deliver to Ukraine what it needs to defend itself."

"Russian terror"

In the south, in Kryvyi Rig, one person was killed and another wounded on Saturday after the bombing of residential buildings, according to an official toll.

On Sunday, Russian forces shelled Kherson, hitting the infrastructure and offices of the Red Cross, with a balance of seven wounded, one of them seriously, according to regional governor Yaroslav Yanuchevich.

"The world must stop this evil," said Zelensky, who denounced "Russian terror."

In total, "the enemy carried out three air strikes and about fifty missile shots on the day" on Saturday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian army said.

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that the day before it fired "missiles" against the "Ukrainian military command system and energy infrastructures linked to it."

Credit: Jornada