Russia-Ukraine updates: US announces $3bn military aid for Kyiv

The United States says attacks in eastern Ukraine show that an Orthodox Christmas ceasefire announced by Putin was a “cynical” ploy.

Department of State spokesman Ned Price recalled that he had called the ceasefire “nothing but cynical” when Putin announced it on Thursday.

“I think that assessment has been borne out given what we’ve seen over the course of the day,” Price told reporters on Friday.

“We believe that our scepticism is warranted because of what we’ve seen from Russia over the course of this conflict,” Price said.

The White House has announced a new $3.75bn military assistance package to help Ukraine and its neighbours on NATO’s eastern flank as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on.

The latest tranche of assistance will include for the first time Bradley armoured vehicles for Ukraine. The armoured carrier is used to transport troops to combat and is known as a “tank killer” because of the anti-tank missiles it can fire.

The biggest US assistance package to date for Kyiv includes a $2.85bn drawdown from the Pentagon’s stocks that will be sent directly to Ukraine and $225m in foreign military financing to build the long-term capacity of Ukraine’s military and support its modernisation, according to the White House.

It also includes $682m in foreign military financing for European allies to help replace donations of military equipment they have made to Ukraine.

The US Department of Defense has awarded L3Harris Technologies Inc a $40m contract to deliver 14 anti-drone weapon systems to bolster Ukraine’s security forces, according to the defence contractor.

The company said its Vehicle Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) kit will allow Ukraine ground forces to target, shoot down enemy drones and defend against ground threats.

Under the contract, L3Harris will deliver four VAMPIRE units by mid-2023 and 10 more by year-end.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has held a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the situation in Ukraine, and the president thanked Germany for providing Marder infantry fighting vehicles and other equipment, Berlin said on Friday.

German defence minister Christine Lambrecht spoke with her US counterpart to coordinate fighting vehicles and air defence for Ukraine after Berlin joined Washington and Paris in sending more weaponry to Kyiv.

In a statement, the German defence ministry spoke about coordinating further military support, particularly regarding infantry fighting vehicles and a Patriot missile defence system pledged by Berlin.

“Together with our allies, we continue to support Ukraine in unity, solidarity and close coordination,” Lambrecht said.

The US issues new sanctions for those supplying Iranian drones to Russia.

The US Department of the Treasury said it imposed sanctions on six executives and board members of Qods Aviation Industries (QAI), also known as Light Airplanes Design and Manufacturing Industries.

It described Qods Aviation Industries, which has been under US sanctions since 2013, as a key Iranian defence manufacturer responsible for the production of drones.

“We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to deny Putin the weapons that he is using to wage his barbaric and unprovoked war on Ukraine,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said in a statement.

The US has previously imposed sanctions on companies and people it accuses of producing or transferring Iranian drones that Russia has used to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Moscow has denied its forces used Iranian drones in Ukraine.

Daniel Hawkins, a journalist based in Moscow, tells Al Jazeera that the ceasefire’s announcement came “as more of a surprise to most Russians than the fact it subsequently broke down”.

“This was quite a surprise to many Russians, albeit a positive one. The question was more of if this was a spontaneous response from Putin to the call by Patriarch Kirill to call this truce or if this was preplanned as a sort of PR operation.”

Hawkins explained the ceasefire was, in some ways, “if not set up to fail, perhaps expected to fail” as Kyiv rejected any ideas of a possible truce before Putin’s statement on Thursday. This, for Putin, acted to reaffirm the Kremlin’s claims that “they are the ones who are seeking peace”.

“For Moscow, this was a gesture that was full of symbolism and is designed to send a message to the domestic audience that Moscow is the one seeking peace and Kyiv is the one rejecting this alleged olive branch,” he said.

German authorities recorded a sharp increase in conscientious objectors in 2022, which saw the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“In 2021, we received 201 applications for conscientious objection,” a spokesperson for the Federal Office for Family Affairs and Civil Society Functions told the German media group, Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RDN).

For 2022, that number had risen to 951, he added.

While Germany abolished mandatory military service in 2011, the figure refers to soldiers already serving in the Bundeswehr, reservists and a category called “non-servists”.

“We had 223 applications from servicewomen and men, 266 from reservists and 593 from non-servists,” a defence ministry spokesman said later.

Despite Germany not being actively involved in the conflict in Ukraine, it has been supplying Ukraine with weapons, with Berlin most recently announcing it would send armoured personnel carriers.

World food prices dropped for a ninth month in December, but hit their highest level on record for the full year in 2022, United Nations data found.

Food prices rose to a monthly record high in March after Russia invaded Ukraine, a significant worldwide wheat and cooking oil supplier.

A grain deal brokered by Turkey and the UN in July lifted a Russian naval blockade on Ukrainian exports.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation said its price index, tracking the monthly change in international food commodities, saw a 1.9 percent drop from November.

It was also 1 percent lower than in December 2021.

But the index was 14.3 percent higher overall in 2022 compared with the previous year as it reached an all-time high of 143.7 points.

Zelenskyy says he spoke with the Swedish prime minister about the situation on the front line and the need to bolster Ukraine’s defence forces.

On Telegram, the Ukrainian president wrote: “Online meeting with Prime Minister of Sweden Ulf Kristersson. I spoke in detail about the situation at the frontline and the risks of its escalation, as well as the key needs of Ukraine to strengthen the defence forces.”

Zelenskyy added that they expected to begin negotiations on Ukraine’s application to join the European Union under Sweden’s presidency, which will last until June 30, 2023.

“I am grateful for the humanitarian assistance and invite Ulf Kristersson to continue the dialogue on all areas during a personal meeting in Kyiv,” he added.

Adviser to Zelenskyy, Mikhail Podolyak, says Russia’s ceasefire is a “primitive and cynical deception”.

On Twitter, Podolyak wrote: “January 6. Air alert all over. Children are again in cold bomb shelters. A fire station was shelled in Kherson.

“This is the essence of ‘Russian truce’: kill in the back, imitating silence. ‘Never’. Never take any RF’s words seriously. It is always a primitive & cynical deception.”

Jan 6. Air alert all over 🇺🇦. Children are again in cold bomb shelters. A fire station was shelled in Kherson. This is the essence of "Russian truce": kill in the back, imitating silence.
"Never".
Never take any RF's words seriously. It is always a primitive & cynical deception.

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) January 6, 2023

Ukrainian farms have harvested 49.5 million tonnes of grain from 93 percent of the expected area as of January 6, the agriculture ministry said.

The ministry said farmers had harvested 10.7 million hectares (41,300sq miles) of crops, with the grain yield averaging 4.64 tonnes per hectare (about 1,200 tonnes per square mile).

In 2021, Ukraine harvested 32.2 million tonnes of wheat and 9.4 million tonnes of barley.

Ukraine sowed more than 6 million hectares (23,160sq miles) of winter wheat for the 2022 harvest, but only 4.9 million hectares (18,900sq miles) were harvested in Ukrainian-controlled territory.

The ministry has said a fall in output in 2022 was caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia says Ukraine is shelling Russian military positions during Putin’s announced 36-hour ceasefire, which Kyiv and its allies have dismissed as a sham.

The Russian defence ministry said its positions had come under attack in the Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions but that its troops were observing the ceasefire.

“Four mortar shells were fired at Russian positions by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the direction of Lyman,” it said.

Kyiv says it has no intention of halting fighting for the Russian ceasefire, which Ukraine and its allies called a ploy to give Moscow time to regroup.

Putin ordered the 36-hour ceasefire on Thursday, saying it would mark the Russian Orthodox Christian Christmas.

Ukraine’s power grid operator has issued a new appeal to civilians to save electricity as temperatures continue to fall and consumption rises.

Russian missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure since October have caused widespread damage, leading to winter blackouts and shortages of heating and water.

After hitting nearly 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) since the New Year, forecasters say temperatures could soon plunge to -11C (12F) in Kyiv and to -18C (0F) in eastern Ukraine.

“In the near future, a significant drop in temperature is expected, which will lead to a rapid increase in consumption,” grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement on Telegram.

With fighting intensifying on both sides of the conflict, a potential stalemate is yet to be reached.

In Ukraine, the start of 2023 is no different from December, but with renewed optimism.

According to a survey by the Rating Group in late November, about 97 percent of Ukrainians are confident about winning the war.

Read more here on what 2023 has in store for Ukraine.

The Dutch police say they have identified a torso, wrapped in blue plastic, recovered from the IJ – Amsterdam’s waterfront – in 2013 as that of missing Russian art dealer Aleksandr Levin.

Police spokesperson Wendy Boudewijn said the deceased was identified through DNA testing in 2021 but did not earlier release the identity as they had not yet contacted Levin’s next of kin.

Since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, cooperation between Moscow and Amsterdam has been severed, Boudewijn told Reuters news agency.

According to the Dutch daily Telegraaf, Levin was a wealthy businessman who dealt with icons. His body, which had the head and limbs severed, was found in the water near Amsterdam’s gentrified docklands across from the central train station in January 2013.

German public broadcaster ARD has reported that Germany and the US will supply Ukraine with armoured personnel carriers.

According to a chancellery statement, the announcement came following a phone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden on Thursday.

Germany will supply the Ukrainian armed forces with the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, developed more than 50 years ago for the German army, while the US will send Bradley combat tanks.

These are the first Western-style armoured personnel carriers to be received by Ukraine.

Germany has supplied Ukraine with weapons and military equipment worth €2.25 billion ($2.36bn) since the war began, including self-propelled howitzers (heavy artillery pieces), Gepard anti-aircraft tanks, and the Iris-T anti-aircraft system, which can protect an entire city.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Zelenskyy in a phone call that he would consider an invitation to visit Kyiv depending on “various circumstances”, but nothing had yet been decided.

Kishida also reaffirmed Tokyo’s full support for Ukraine.

“I strongly condemned Russia’s continued aggression, and stated that Japan would do its utmost to provide assistance, including to get through the winter, in order to protect the lives of the Ukrainian people,” Kishida told reporters.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a regular news conference that the head of Zelenskyy’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, had extended an invitation via Tokyo’s ambassador to Kyiv for Kishida to visit Ukraine.

Kishida confirmed that he had received the invitation and said, “I would like to consider it based on various circumstances.”

As Russia’s ordered ceasefire begins, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford says from Kyiv: “There’s huge scepticism here as we’ve heard from Zelenskyy over the real motivation for this unilateral ceasefire by the Russian president. Zelenskyy calls it a cover-up potentially giving Russian forces an opportunity to move more equipment to the front line.”

Stratford added it is “highly unlikely” Ukraine will change its game plan in terms of the conflict, despite Putin’s ceasefire order, but that its refusal to participate draws attention to Kyiv’s move away from the Russian Orthodox Church.

“Many people are saying this is just Vladimir Putin trying to get some sort of moral high ground across the Slavic-speaking and Orthodox Christian world,” he added.

The Pentagon says the world is deeply sceptical about Putin’s call for a 36-hour ceasefire in Ukraine.

“I think that there’s significant scepticism both here in the US and around the world right now, given Russia’s long track record of propaganda, disinformation, and its relentless attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters.

“Our focus will continue to be on supporting Ukraine,” Ryder added.