Ukraine war latest: US claims Russia and Iran are developing ‘full defence partnership’ – as NATO chief warns war … – Sky News

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Latest updates on the war in Ukraine as an ally of Vladimir Putin predicts a “Fourth Reich” will be created next year; a Ukrainian official says the Kremlin’s claims that it is open to negotiations are being made because its forces “need more time to regroup and rebuild”.
An air raid alert has been declared across all of Ukraine in the last few moments.
The alert comes as Russian forces continue to shell and bomb towns and cities in eastern and southern Ukraine today.
Yesterday, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Kyiv must accept Moscow’s demands for ending the war or else suffer defeat on the battlefield.
Those demands include Ukraine recognising Russia’s conquest of a fifth of its territory. 
Russia should be expelled from the UN security council, Ukraine’s first deputy speaker Oleksandr Korniyenko has said.
In a statement on Twitter, Mr Korniyenko said Ukraine would not be silent as Russian continues to occupy foreign territories.
It is not clear how Russia could be removed from the body, given it is a permanent member. 
Russia also has a veto on votes and it would likely be able to block any motion to remove it.
The US has launched a special plan to get the patriot missile system in operation in Ukraine in “less than six months”, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr Kuleba said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the US last week as he revealed the US government’s plan to get the patriot surface-to-air missile battery to Ukraine.
Usually, the training for using the system takes up to a year but it appears Ukraine is poised to receive them sooner.

Mr Kuleba said that the US government had developed a program for Ukrainian troops to complete training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield”.
While the Ukrainian official did not mention a specific time frame, he said only that it would be “very much less than six months.” 
And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine.
Mr Kuleba also said during the interview that Ukraine would do whatever it could to win the war in 2023.
“Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. 
“Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
Mr Zelenskyy’s visit to the US was his first foreign trip since the war started in February.
During the trip, Ukraine secured a new $1.8bn military aid package, including a patriot missile battery.
These images show Ukrainian soldiers using their phones in a shelter powered by a generator amid intense shelling in Bakhmut.
The UK’s defence ministry said in its latest update of the military situation in Ukraine that fighting was particularly intense around the strategic eastern town, which sits in the Donetsk region.
The Donetsk and Luhansk regions both make up the industrial Donbas area.
We reported earlier that Russian lawmaker Pavel Antov and Russian citizen Vladimir Bidenov died in unusual circumstances in a hotel in Odisha, India. 
Mr Antov had recently criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine but soon retracted it.
He died after falling from the third floor of his hotel on 24 December.

Mr Bidenov was found lying unconscious in his room on 22 December and was declared dead by doctors at the district hospital.
Now, Olexander Scherba, a Ukrainian diplomat who worked as ambassador of Ukraine to Austria in 2014–2021, has commented on the incident and said Russia’s consul general in Calcutta has stated the police see nothing suspicious about Mr Antov’s death. 
Elon Musk has responded to bizarre predictions made by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev for 2023 by calling them “epic”.
In a Twitter thread, the Vladimir Putin ally predicted a “Fourth Reich” – a hypothetical Reich synonymous with the resurgence of Nazism – would be created next year and said a war would break out between France and the Fourth Reich.
He also claimed there would be a civil war in the US, with California and Texas becoming independent states as a result.
Mr Medvedev also said that Mr Musk would “win the presidential election in a number of states” and the UK would re-join the EU.
Also among the predictions were that Poland and Hungary would occupy western regions of Ukraine.
Following the comments, the Tesla boss wrote: “Epic thread!”
A court in Minsk has sentenced in absentia former Olympic swimmer Aliaksandra Herasimenia and political activist Alexander Opeykin to 12 years in prison for calling for sanctions and actions aimed at harming the national security of Belarus.
Ms Herasimenia, a three-time Olympic medallist, was among the elite athletes who fled Belarus in the wake of a crackdown against those who protested what they said was the fraudulent re-election of Alexander Lukashenko in August 2020.

Aleksander Opeykin is the chairman of the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation aimed at supporting athletes who have been detained and face repressions under Mr Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule.
Following their sentencing, a statement released by the state news BelTA agency read: “They were found guilty of public calls to commit actions aimed at causing harm to the national security of Belarus, including the use of restrictive measures (sanctions) against Belarus, individuals and legal entities of the republic.
“Such actions entailed grave consequences.”
According to the US embassy in Belarus, there are more than 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus.
Footage has emerged which purports to show an elderly woman being dragged out of a bus in Russia for reportedly criticising the war in Ukraine.
The clip was shared by the independent project – WarTranslated – which translates materials about the war in Ukraine.
The video has not been verified by Sky News.
Earlier this year, Vladimir Putin signed a law which made “discrediting” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illegal.
The law also banned the spread of “false information” about the war – which Russia continues to call a “special military operation”.
The Kremlin’s claims that it is open to negotiations are being made because its forces “need more time to regroup and rebuild”, a Ukrainian official has told CNN.
Alexander Rodnyansky, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the Russian government was simply trying to buy more time.
He told CNN: “The Blitzkrieg has gone terribly wrong for them and they know that, so they need more time to regroup and rebuild their troops.”
Over the weekend, Vladimir Putin said Russia was open to negotiations over the war in Ukraine and blamed Kyiv and its Western backers for a lack of talks, a stance Washington has previously dismissed.

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“We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them – we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are,” Mr Putin told Russia’s Rossiya 1 state television.
And yesterday, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Associated Press the country was aiming to hold peace talks by the end of February.
He added this was likely to be at the United Nations, with Secretary General Antonio Guterres as a possible mediator.
Vladimir Putin has met Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at a museum in St Petersburg, the Belarusian media outlet Nexta reports.
Footage shows the two leaders speaking in front of cameras inside the country’s State Russian Museum earlier this morning.
Last week, the Russian leader and his Belarusian counterpart extolled ever-closer ties as Mr Putin visited Minsk for the first time since 2019.
Russian forces used Belarus as a launch pad for their invasion of Ukraine in February but Mr Lukashenko has repeatedly said his country will not be drawn into Ukraine.
He has also said that recent military manoeuvres were not aimed at Ukraine and dismissed “conspiracy theories” about deployments of Belarusian armed forces at the border.
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