Ukraine- Russia – latest news: Zelensky tours Europe as Putin officials hits out at ‘pompous’ president

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is touring Europe after calling for fighter jets in the UK to help his country’s fight against Russian invasion.

Ukraine’s president will attend an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday to continue his push for more advanced weapons.

At the start of his surprise trip in London on Wednesday, Mr Zelensky used a rousing speech to Parliament to urge the UK and Western allies to “spread wings for freedom”.

He then traveled to Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and told a news conference there was “very little time” to get the weapons ready.

He will fly with Mr Macron to Thursday’s EU leaders’ meeting.

The European Union will provide more military support to Ukraine, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell reiterated to reporters on Thursday as EU leaders arrived for a summit.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is preparing to call for more weapons in the fight against Russia and a quick start of his country’s EU accession talks at a summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Moscow has attacked President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “hasty” visit to Europe.

In a sharply worded statement Thursday, the Russian embassy said: “Zelensky’s pompous calls to the values ​​of ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’ for which Kiev claims to fight were patently hypocritical.”

It then satirized “the ex-comedian in a green sweatshirt who is now touring Europe”.

“We would like to remind London: in the event of such a scenario, the fatalities of another round of escalation, as well as its military-political consequences for the European continent and the whole world, will be in the hands of the United Kingdom.

“Russia will know how to react to unfriendly actions by the British side,” it said.

Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has stopped recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine, Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said Thursday.

“Prisoner recruitment by private military company Wagner has completely stopped,” Prigozhin said in response to a request for comment from a Russian media outlet posted on social media.

“We are fulfilling all of our obligations to those who now work for us,” he said.

Wagner began recruiting prisoners in Russia’s sprawling penitentiary system in the summer of 2022, with Prigozhin, a catering entrepreneur who served nine years in prison during the Soviet Union, offering convicts a pardon if they survived six months in Ukraine.

Wagner has not given details of how many convicts have joined his ranks, but Russian penal service figures released in November showed the country’s prison population fell by over 20,000 between August and November, the largest drop in over a decade.

A blog by a US investigative journalist claiming the United States was behind the blasts that destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipelines should become the basis for an international probe, Russia’s top lawmaker said on Thursday.

The White House on Wednesday dismissed the report released by Seymour Hersh that said an attack on the pipelines was carried out last September on orders from US President Joe Biden.

“The published facts should become the basis for an international investigation to bring Biden and his accomplices to justice,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Russian State Duma.

Volodin said the United States should “pay compensation to the countries affected by the terrorist attack.”

Moscow has repeatedly, without providing evidence, claimed that the West was behind the explosions that hit the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines last September — multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects that carried Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany.

The head of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said a decision had been made to stop recruiting prisoners for combat in Ukraine.

“Prisoner recruitment by private military company Wagner has been completely halted,” the head of Russia’s proxy group, himself a former prisoner, said today.

“We are fulfilling all of our obligations to those who now work for us,” he said.

In December, US intelligence said it believed Wagner had 40,000 convict fighters stationed in Ukraine, making up the vast majority of the group’s personnel in the country.

Wagner has not given details of how many convicts have joined his ranks, but according to figures released in November by the Russian Penal Service, the country’s prison population fell by over 20,000 between August and November, the biggest drop in over a decade.

The Ukrainian military confirmed that Russian attacks remained intense yesterday in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Kyiv said Moscow’s forces were concentrated in Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut and Aviivka oblasts.

Airstrikes and shelling also targeted the Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia regions of north, north-east and central Ukraine.

“Greetings Mr. President, I would really like to hug you, but I am not allowed,” the correspondent told Mr. Zelensky.

“Why not, please hug me,” the Ukrainian leader replied, stepping down from the stage to hug her while others applauded.

The journalist then asked Mr Sunak if he thought the UK’s decision to send military jets to the war-torn nation had taken “too long”.

The 79-year-old said during his speech that he “condemned” the invasion of the country, but also the “provocateurs” whose actions he claimed led to the Russian invasion.

In response, Ukrainian Security Council delegate Sergiy Kyslytsia slammed Waters as “a brick in the wall of Russian disinformation and propaganda.”

Rishi Sunak has said that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to the issue of supplying fighter jets to Ukraine.

Speaking during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday, the prime minister said the deployment of fighter jets was “part of the conversation” between the two.

Mr Sunak told reporters during a press conference at a military base in Dorset: “Of course when it comes to fighter jets they are part of the conversation – in fact we discussed that today and earlier.