Ukraine updates: Macron, Scholz meet Zelenskyy in Paris

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday pledged that France would firmly stand by Ukraine, as he met with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy at the Elysee Palace in Paris.

France is "determined to help Ukraine to victory and the re-establishment of its legitimate rights," said Macron ahead of a late night dinner with Zelenskyy and Germany's Olaf Scholz, adding Paris would "continue the efforts" to deliver arms to Kyiv.

Macron added that Russia could not be allowed to win the war and that the two leaders, along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who traveled to Paris as well, would be discussing Kyiv's needs to sustain its war efforts.

Scholz also assured Zelenskyy of enduring allied support. The German chancellor said that since Russia's invasion began a year ago, Germany and its partners had backed Ukraine "financially, with humanitarian aid and with weapons."

"We will continue to do so as long as necessary," Scholz told reporters.

Scholz said that leaders at an EU summit on Thursday would send a strong signal of solidarity with Kyiv. "I am taking a clear message to Brussels: Ukraine belongs to the European family," he said.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy urged France and Germany to be "game changers" by sending modern planes to Ukraine. "We have very little time. I'm talking now about the weapons needed for peace and to stop the war started by Russia," the Ukrainian president said.

"France and Germany have the potential to be game changers and that's how I see our talks today. The sooner we get heavy long range weapons and our pilots get modern planes ... the quicker this Russian aggression will end," he added.

Earlier on Wednesday, Zelenskyy visited London. It is his second foreign trip since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022, after a December visit to Washington, where he met with President Joe Biden and addressed the US Congress. On Thursday, Zelenskyy is expected to join EU leaders at a summit in Brussels.

Here are some of the other notable developments concerning the war in Ukraine on Wednesday, February 8.

SpaceX curbed Ukraine's use of Starlink internet for drones

SpaceX has taken steps to prevent Ukraine's military from using the company's Starlink satellite internet service for controlling drones in the region during the country's war with Russia, according to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president.

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, which has provided Ukraine's military with broadband communications in its defense against Russia's military, was "never never meant to be weaponized," Shotwell said.

"However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement," she said. Speaking later with reporters, Shotwell referred to reports that the Ukrainian military had used the Starlink service to control drones.

"There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that," she said, referring to Starlink's use with drones. "There are things that we can do, and have done." Shotwell declined to say what measures SpaceX had taken.

Zelenskyy visits London

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy embarked on a rare foreign trip on Wednesday for talks with European allies. 

The president started off in the UK, where he appealed for donations of fighter jets for Ukraine. He spoke in the House of Commons, parliament's lower chamber, held talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and had an audience with King Charles III. 
You can read the story in full here. 

 

Russia and Ukraine both claim to have inflicted heavy casualties

Reports of intensifying fighting on the front lines continued to gather pace as both Russia and Ukraine claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties on the opposing sides. 

Ukraine's military said overnight that 1,030 Russian troops had been killed over a 24-hour period, the highest daily toll of the war. 

The figure could not be independently verified, nor could Russia's claim of having inflicted 6,500 Ukrainian casualties in the month of January. 

But the reports appear to corroborate both sides' accounts of intensified fighting, in particular around the city of Bakhmut. 

A Ukrainian official told Reuters that Kyiv was also reckoning with a fresh offensive "in either the Kharkiv or Zaporizhzhia direction." The one-year anniversary of Russia's February 24 invasion is approaching, and observers believe the Kremlin is likely keen to secure something it can present to a domestic audience as progress ahead of that date. 

Germany's Pistorius in Poland, talking Leopard tanks

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius — who on Tuesday made his first foreign trip since taking office, going to Kyiv — moved on to Warsaw on Wednesday. 

Pistorius called on more European partners to join a German-Polish project looking to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine.

He said that he and Poland's Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak and their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksij Reznikov were planning to invite partners a meeting for next week. 

"It is now more important than ever that we really start putting all levers into motion and endeavor to mobilize all means that have not yet been activated, so that Ukraine can be supported in its defense against Russia," Pistorius said. He said that for a few western allies, there was still "scope to do more." 

Germany itself has faced allegations of dragging its feet on military aid decisions for Ukraine, not least from Poland. Since taking office last month, Pistorius has tried to turn the argument around and focus on how much Berlin has done despite its historical post-war restrictions on arming hot conflicts. 

Somewhat unusually, a joint press conference was not scheduled with Blaszczak. Poland's governing PiS party faces national

elections later in the year and has been critical of Germany publicly on a host of issues in recent months. 

US dismisses Seymour Hersh 'fiction' about Nord Stream pipeline blasts

The White House, the US State Department and the CIA have all called a new blog post published by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claiming that the US was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year and that Joe Biden authorized the operation "utterly false and a complete fiction." 

Officials said as much both in response to Hersh's own requests for comment and publicly on Wednesday. 

Russia, meanwhile, said the US had questions to answer following the publication. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova shared a link to the lengthy blog post published on Substack online, and said: "The White House must now comment on all these facts." 

Hersh's article, which leans heavily on unnamed sources, claims explosives were planted on the pipelines during an unrelated diving exercise and then remotely triggered at a later date. 

Investigators in Sweden and Denmark, in whose waters the ruptures occurred, have so far said that the damage was caused in an act of sabotage, but have not said who they believe was responsible. 

Hersh is one of the US' most renowned investigative journalists, having had a hand in groundbreaking reports on issues like exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, covering the Watergate scandal, and reporting on US mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. 

However, in recent years his critics allege that he's drifted into conspiracy theorist territory, for instance over his critical claims regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden and who might be behind chemical weapons usage in Syria. 

Despite decades at top publications including the New Yorker and the New York Times, he published his latest story in a personal capacity. 

MH17 investigators say Russian president played an active role in plane's downing

A multi-national investigation team, not supported by Russia, has concluded that President Vladimir Putin played an active role in authorizing the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane over eastern Ukraine in 2014. 

Investigators said there were "strong indications" that the decision to offer the missiles used to shoot the plane to pro-Russian rebels was taken by Putin. However, they said the did not have evidence of Putin being involved in the shooting itself. 

Investigators also said they were halting their work, having exhausted their lines of investigation.

You can read the story in full here. 

Scholz tells Bundestag that Putin 'will not achieve his goals'

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag parliament on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin "will not achieve his goals" in Ukraine. 

"[President Vladimir] Putin will not achieve his goals — not on the battlefield and not through a dictated peace. That much, at least, is certain after a year of war," Scholz told the Bundestag. 

He also sought to assure Ukraine, ahead of his meeting with Zelenskyy in Paris, that its ultimate future was as a part of the EU. 

You can read the story in full here. 

More on the war in Ukraine on dw.com

China and Ukraine have maintained a "strategic partnership" for years. But William Yang from DW's Taipei bureau in Taiwan writes that China's closeness to Russia is forcing Kyiv to reconsider this. 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has left it internationally ostracized. But will its support for Myanmar's military junta reestablish an Asian foothold? DW explores. 

Ukraine also featured quite prominently in US President Joe Biden's State of the Union address late on Tuesday. You can catch up on that here. 

And if you'd rather watch something more in depth, what about this deep dive we aired this week looking at superyachts, the multi-million dollar status symbols tailored for the wealthiest oligarchs from all over the world, Russia included? 

msh/jcg (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)