Ukraine is hoping to have a U.N.-backed peace summit by the end of February, or roughly a year into the Russian invasion, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Associated Press on Monday. Kuleba said United Nations Secretary General António Guterres should be the mediator, but insisted that Kyiv would not directly engage with Moscow until Russia faces a war-crimes tribunal. A U.N. spokesperson said Guterres could “only mediate if all parties want him to mediate.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said again Sunday that he was willing to have talks to end the war, though the West and Ukraine do not view his statement as a serious effort to engage. The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Ukraine must face new “realities” — recognizing Russian territorial gains and control of Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014 — before a peace plan can be enacted.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
4. From our correspondents
But much of this equipment is in need of repair. While each Ukrainian brigade has a technical unit dedicated to claiming abandoned tanks and equipment, there’s no orderly system for locating and matching spare parts. The result is equipment waiting in repair sites across the country, as forces struggle to find replacement pieces, write The Washington Post’s Samantha Schmidt, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Serhii Korolchuk.
Vadym Ustymenko, a member of a tank unit in Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Assault Brigade, described the difficulties of dealing with found tanks to The Post. “Those you could just start up or only needed a few minutes of work, you could count on one hand,” he said. “Those that needed some repair but would eventually run was another 30 percent probably. And the last 50 percent was junk that requires a whole lot of work.”
