Shoigu: We will crush all weapons and equipment coming to Ukraine

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a dark speech, expressed fears of a “wider war” due to the growing “risks of escalation” of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Guterres said 2023 will see “a set of challenges the likes of which we have not seen in our lives,” ranging from the war in Ukraine to the climate crisis and rising levels of extreme poverty around the world. In a grim speech in which he laid out his priorities for 2023, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the world could be heading towards a “wider war” at a time when “risks of escalation” in Ukraine are rising. Guterres said: “We have started 2023 and we are facing a number of challenges that we have not seen in our lives,” between the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis and extreme poverty. He recalled that a group of scientists who run the Doomsday Clock in Washington recently calculated that the time on the clock is 90 seconds before midnight, which means that humanity has never been as close to the end of the world as it is today. Guterres saw this as a wake-up call. And he stressed that “we need to wake up and get to work”, listing the list of urgent issues in 2023, at the top of which is the war in Ukraine. And he continued: “The chances for peace do not stop decreasing. The risks of escalation and bloodshed continue to rise. For his part, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Kyiv lost more than 6.5 thousand military personnel, 26 aircraft, 7 helicopters, 208 drones, 341 tanks and armored vehicles in January. “Groups of Russian troops continue to grind up all the weapons and equipment that were delivered to Kyiv, both on their delivery routes and on the battlefields,” Shoigu said during an objective conference call. He pointed out that “despite the unprecedented military assistance of Western countries, the enemy is suffering heavy losses.” He continued: “In the first month of this year alone, they numbered more than six thousand five hundred soldiers, 26 aircraft, 7 helicopters, 208 drones, 341 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, and 40 combat vehicles, including launchers.” Shoigu stressed that Ukraine understands the impossibility of defeating Russia by military means, therefore, it continues the tactics of intimidation, striking at the civilian population and “resorting to criminal actions to intimidate citizens in the new regions of Russia,” he said. In addition, Transparency International released a report yesterday saying that thousands of properties in Britain are still owned by anonymous investors, including those “close to the Kremlin”, despite sanctions imposed by the British government to stop the flow of suspicious Russian funds. A Transparency International UK report found that despite legislation in place to stop the flow of suspicious Russian money into the kingdom in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, nearly 52,000 properties in Britain are owned by anonymous investors, including those “close to the Kremlin.”