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A Ukrainian Holocaust survivor made an impassioned plea to the German parliament on Wednesday to do more to fight Russia’s “new war of extermination”, as Germany marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. “Back then Hitler wanted to kill me because I am Jew,” said Roman Schwarzman, 88. “Now Putin wants to kill me because I am a Ukrainian.” Schwarzman, born in Berschad in western Ukraine, was invited to address the Bundestag for its yearly session marking the liberation of the Auschwitz camp in what was Nazi-occupied Poland. Schwarzman, the president of Ukraine’s association for concentration camp and ghetto survivors, said he had first-hand experience of “Russian terror” when a missile hit his building in Odesa in December 2023, leaving everything inside his apartment smashed to pieces. “I have already been able to escape extermination once,” he said, referring to the Holocaust. “Now I am an old man and must once again live with the fear that my children and grandchildren could fall victim to a war of extermination.”
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Ukraine has confirmed it struck Lukoil’s Norsi refinery, Russia’s fourth-largest, in Kstovo, east of Moscow and about 800km (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian military said the strike on the refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region caused a large fire. The Reuters news agency verified a video posted on social media that showed orange flames lighting up the night sky in Kstovo, but could not confirm it was the refinery that was burning. The Russian petrochemicals company Sibur said it had temporarily suspended operations at its plant in Kstovo after a fire resulting from a drone attack.
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A Ukrainian drone attack hit Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station, part of the oil export route via the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, causing a fire and leaks, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine said on Wednesday. The attack also hit a Russian missile storage facility in Russia’s Tver region, causing a string of explosions, the source told Reuters, which could not independently verify the information. A source in Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly, Transneft, said there had been no disruptions and described the damage in Tver region as limited.
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The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said a mother and her two-year-old child were killed when a drone struck a family home there. He said the child’s father and another child had been wounded and taken to hospital. Ukraine and Russia both deny targeting civilians, but thousands of civilians, mostly Ukrainians, have been killed.
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More details emerged of a standoff involving the Ukrainian defence minister, Rustem Umerov, over arms procurement. After a criminal investigation of Umerov was launched by anti-corruption investigators, his ministry’s press service said it was a legal formality containing no evidence of wrongdoing. The investigation began after a watchdog alleged Umerov had illegally sidelined the head of the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), Maryna Bezrukova. Umerov is refusing to renew her contract after accusing the agency of playing “political games” and leaking information. The DPA was created to bring more accountability in arms buying and protect against corruption.
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The situation surrounding defence procurement has alarmed Ukraine’s G7 backers whose diplomats have urged Ukrainian officials to resolve it quickly. Bezrukova told Reuters she had not received any prior complaints about her work and the crisis could complicate future talks with prospective suppliers. “This has effectively spoiled a year of our work to a significant degree,” she said. “Confidence is built over a long time, but it can be destroyed very quickly.”
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In Russia, a former deputy defence minister, Timur Ivanov, was in court on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing on charges of embezzlement and money laundering. He will be tried alongside Anton Filatov, the former director of state defence corporation Oboronlogistika, owned by the defence ministry. Investigators have said Ivanov embezzled over 3bn rubles (€45m at the time) from a collapsed bank and over 200m rubles while buying ferries to serve Crimea. He also faces a bribery charge in a separate case that has not yet come to trial. Filatov was charged with embezzlement in 2018 and then the case was closed, only to be reopened in 2024. Both men denied any guilt while under investigation, Tass news agency reported.
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Germany’s budget committee of parliament called on the finance minister, Joerg Kukies, to approve an additional €3bn (US$3.13bn) in military aid for Ukraine, sources told Reuters on Wednesday. The call was backed by the opposition conservatives of the CDU and the Free Democrats (FDP), with the abstention of the governing Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, according to committee members. Budget committee members from the CDU and FDP have said there are enough funds in the budget for the request. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, from the SPD, is in favour of additional military aid but his insistence on an exception to the country’s “debt brake” led to the collapse of his government last year. As a result Germany is headed to elections on 23 February.
