Live: NATO taking part in Ukraine conflict with arms supplies, says Putin

Issued on: 26/02/2023 – 09:44Modified: 26/02/2023 – 09:47

9:07am: NATO taking part in Ukraine conflict with arms supplies, says Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO members of taking part in the Ukraine conflict by donating arms to the country and said the West planned to break up Russia.

“They are sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine. This really is participation,” Putin said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel aired on Sunday.

7:52am: Ukraine military says Russian offensive near Yahidne unsuccessful

Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut front line, were Yahidne is located.

The months-long struggle for Bakhmut, where only about 5,000 of 70,000 residents remain, has seen some of the bloodiest attritional fighting of Russia’s year-old invasion.

7:52am: Gazprom to ship 39 mcm of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Sunday

Russia’s Gazprom said it will ship 39 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Sunday.

3:33am: Russia’s UN diplomat accuses West of arm twisting in vote isolating Moscow

Russia’s senior diplomat to the United Nations accused the West on Sunday of “cowboy” methods and “arm twisting” of some countries during last week’s United Nations General Assembly vote that demanding Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

The 193-member General Assembly of the UN on Thursday overwhelmingly isolated Russia, calling on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Moscow’s invasion for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in line with the founding UN Charter.

“The methods of achieving the result are again ‘cowboy’,” Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, said on the Telegram messaging platform.

He added that a number of representatives from “developing” countries complained to the Russian mission about pressure from their Western colleagues who are allies of Kyiv.

“According to our calculations, almost 30 pairs of arms were twisted,” Polyansky said. Polyansky did not provide any evidence for his accusations and there has been no public comments from developing countries about pressure on them to vote in support of the U.N. resolution.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)