Russia mocks British efforts to support Ukraine; Blinken warns of ‘real problem’ if Kyiv gets no extra funding

Speaking to CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick, Katalin Novak, the president of Hungary, discusses the Russia-Ukraine war and the European Union’s support for Kyiv.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nikolay Denkov, the prime minister of Bulgaria, discusses why he believes united support for Ukraine is so important.

Russia’s most famous opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, said on Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin’s state would one day crumble along with the post-Soviet elite which he cast as venal, power-hungry and duplicitous.

Navalny, 47, a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning Putin’s elite and voicing allegations of vast corruption, is currently in a jail about 60 km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.

“Lies, lies and nothing but lies,” Navalny said in a social media post facilitated by his supporters. “It will collapse and crumble. Putin’s state is not viable. One day we will look at his place and he won’t be there.”

Navalny, who has been sentenced to stay in jail until he is 74, has repeatedly warned that Putin’s Russia is a state run by “thieves and criminals” and that one day there will be seismic change via revolt.

Russian authorities dismiss Navalny’s criticism as nonsense and say that he and his supporters are extremists with links to the U.S. CIA intelligence agency intent on sowing discord in Russia.

Navalny is in jail, his movement is outlawed and most of his key supporters have fled abroad. He earned admiration from the divided Russian opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany where he underwent treatment for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.

On his return he was jailed. Russia denies Navalny’s claims that Russia’s secret police poisoned him with Novichok. Navalny said that fellow prisoners repeatedly asked him “Why did you return?”

He said that modern Russia had been instilled with “cynicism and conspiracy” to such an extent that many people no longer believed in simple motivations, suspecting instead that he was part of some secret Kremlin intrigue.

“I have my country and my convictions. And I don’t want to give up my country or my beliefs,” Navalny said. “And I cannot betray either the first or the second.”

“If your beliefs are worth anything, you should be ready to stand up for them. And if necessary, make sacrifices.”

— Reuters

JPM CEO Jamie Dimon said that the American public must learn that supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia is about democracy worldwide.

“We have to teach the American public that this is about freedom and democracy for the free world, and that’s where the battle is being fought,” he told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.

Asked whether his message would get broad support from Americans and what might happen if Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election, Dimon said: “American leadership have to explain to the American public why it’s important … this is ‘America first,’ this is the battle zone of democracy and freedom.”

Dimon said he and other business leaders met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday to discuss “refinancing” the redevelopment of Ukraine once the war with Russia is over. “So, he is starting to think ahead,” Dimon said of the Ukrainian president.

Wearing a Ukrainian flag pin on his lapel, he said: “My heart goes out to the guy. People forget that, every day, he wakes up in the morning to this 600 mile front, there’s a million soldiers fighting off Russians, they’ve had 300,000 casualties so far. This may go on for longer. We have to help them.”

— Lucy Handley

Hungary’s decision to so far block EU cash to Ukraine is being celebrated in the Kremlin, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova told CNBC.

The EU failed to agree on a 50 billion euro ($54 billion) package in financial aid for Ukraine in December after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed the measure. The stalling of further aid dealt a further blow to Kyiv after U.S. lawmakers had also failed to agree a $60 billion package of military aid for Ukraine.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russian drones that attacked the southern port city of Odesa on Tuesday flew at a low altitude to avoid Ukraine’s air defenses, the spokesperson for South Ukrainian Defense Forces told reporters Wednesday.

“All the drones were attacking from the Black Sea, they chose the lowest possible flight altitude to probably bypass air defense systems,” Natalia Humeniuk told journalists, news agency Ukrinform reported.

Despite being deployed in “extremely difficult conditions,” air defense systems destroyed their targets, she said.

The Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Odesa were hit by Russian missiles and drones Tuesday evening, injuring civilians and damaging residential buildings, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said three people were injured were injured in the attacks on Odesa and rescuers evacuated 130 residents due to damaged housing infrastructure. Around 60 houses had their heating cut off overnight as a result of drone wreckage falling on pipelines.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia has asked its neighbour Kazakhstan to increase egg supplies to Russian retailers, the Kazakh government said on Wednesday, after President Vladimir Putin personally apologised for soaring egg prices.

The Kazakh cabinet said in a statement that a Russian deputy prime minister had raised the matter in talks with his Kazakh counterpart Serik Zhumangarin, who in turn ordered the Kazakh Agriculture Ministry to look into it.

The price of eggs in Russia rose more than 40% last year and the Moscow government has said it will exempt 1.2 billion eggs from import duty in the first half of this year in order to address the problem.

— Reuters

Russia’s Foreign Ministry mocked U.K. efforts to support Ukraine, saying promises of future security cooperation were not binding.

Last Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed a bilateral agreement aimed at increasing their security cooperation.

The deal “formalises a range of support the UK has been and will continue to provide for Ukraine’s security, including intelligence sharing, cyber security, medical and military training, and defence industrial cooperation,” the government said. 

It also commits the U.K. to consulting with Ukraine in the event that it is attacked by Russia again, and to provide “swift and sustained” assistance for Kyiv’s defense. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova mocked the agreement Wednesday, saying “the Ukrainians were simply handed a brightly wrapped set of promises of mainly advisory assistance, surrounded by all this with beautiful assurances of support for Ukraine, which have no legally binding force, no legally binding nature,” she told reporters Wednesday, news agency Tass reported.

“With this step, the British leadership is making maximum efforts to prevent G7 and NATO allies from losing interest in what is happening in Ukraine, which London continues to view as a geopolitical instrument aimed against Russia,” she said, without presenting evidence to support her claim.

The U.K.’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron is at the World Economic Forum Wednesday and is due to meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba at the event in Davos.

— Holly Ellyatt

A rights activist in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan was sentenced to four years in a penal colony on Wednesday after a court found him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred, prompting clashes between his supporters and police.

Independent Russian-language news outlets said police fired tear gas and made arrests after scuffles broke out with a large crowd of people who had gathered in support of activist Fail Alsynov. It was not clear how many people had been detained.

Alsynov was accused of insulting migrant workers in a speech he made in April 2023 at a protest over plans to mine for gold in Bashkortostan, which is located in Russia’s southern Ural mountains near the border between Europe and Asia.

His supporters said the case against him was delayed revenge for his role in protests several years earlier in which activists successfully blocked plans to mine for soda on a hill that local people consider a sacred place.

Videos published on social media showed hundreds of people gathered near the court in the small town of Baymak, 1,380 km (860 miles) east of Moscow. Some reports said there were several thousand.

Large protests in Russia are extremely rare because of the risk of arrest over any gatherings which the authorities deem unauthorised. Thousands of people have been detained in the past two years for opposing the war in Ukraine.

— Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has “precipitated virtually everything he sought to prevent” by launching an invasion against Ukraine to separate Kyiv from the West, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a panel discussion in Davos, Switzerland.

“Ukraine has been a profound strategic failure for Vladimir Putin and for Russia, in so many ways,” he said.

“You now have a Russia that overall is weaker militarily, it’s weaker economically, it’s weaker diplomatically. Europe has severed its energy dependence on Russia. Ukrainians are more united than they’ve ever been. The NATO alliance is stronger, is larger and will get larger still in the weeks ahead.”

Russia has repeatedly said that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations — which the country still upholds, along with membership to the EU — violated its national security interests.

“Putin has already failed in what he set out to do: He set out to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, to subsume it into Russia. That has failed, and it cannot and will not succeed,” Blinken said Wednesday, noting that Kyiv’s ambitions to deepen its relationship with the West and Europe need not have divorced it from Russia.

“That was not at all incompatible with maintaining close ties with Russia: cultural, economic and others. Those ties have now been obliterated because of Russia’s aggression,” Blinken said.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Russia and its ally North Korea will develop bilateral relations, including in “sensitive areas,” the Kremlin said Wednesday, a day after Russia’s president held talks with North Korea’s foreign minister.

“The discussion was generally about bilateral relations, about the situation on the Korean Peninsula , an exchange of views on the most pressing international affairs. But the main emphasis was on the development of bilateral relations,” Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters, state news agency RIA Novosti said.

Moscow aims to develop relations in all areas, “including sensitive ones,” Peskov said, without providing more details.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korean Foreign Minister Choi Song Hui Tuesday, marking the latest high-profile meeting between the countries’ officials.

The U.S. has expressed concern over burgeoning military ties between Russia and North Korea, accusing Moscow of using North Korean missiles against Ukraine.

North Korea said the allegations were baseless, while Moscow said they were U.S. disinformation.

— Holly Ellyatt

The chief of the European Union’s executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday said she was “confident” all 27 member states will find a solution to provide funds to Ukraine, an issue currently in gridlock over Hungary’s resistance.

Von der Leyen spoke to lawmakers in the EU parliament after EU leaders last month had agreed to start accession talks with Ukraine but failed to green-light a financial package worth 50 billion euros ($54 bln) to Kyiv over Hungary’s veto.

— Reuters

The Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Odesa were hit by Russian missiles and drones Tuesday evening, injuring civilians and damaging residential buildings, Ukrainian officials said.

Two Russian missiles damaged 19 residential buildings in Kharkiv, northeast Ukraine, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram Wednesday morning.

“Seventeen townspeople are injured, 14 of them are in the hospital, one is in serious condition. 14 cars were crushed. All relevant services continue to work on site. All the necessary help is provided to everyone who needs it,” he said.

Terekhov described the attack on the city center as “exclusively terrorist in nature,” saying there was no military infrastructure in the area. Russia says it does not target civilians in its strikes, although at least 10,000 civilians have died in almost two years of war. Eleven people were injured in Kharkiv last week when a hotel was hit by two Russian missiles.

The southern port of Odesa and the wider region were also targets, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said, leaving three people injured. He said rescuers had evacuated 130 residents as a result of damaged housing infrastructure.

“The Russian military also attacked Kherson region, Dnipropetrovsk region and Sumy region,” Klymenko added. “Fortunately, there were no casualties. In total, 10 shellings on 8 settlements of the country were recorded that [Tuesday] night.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Polish President Andrzej Duda told CNBC Tuesday that Ukraine’s refusal to cede ground to Russia in any prospective peace talks was “perfectly understandable.”

Speaking to CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Duda restated his support for his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, following peace formula talks last weekend.

“It’s no wonder that the Ukrainian authorities won’t speak to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin today because they were clear from the start,” Duda told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick.

“To me, as the president of Poland, it’s perfectly understandable. It’s clear,” he said.

Duda’s comments were echoed by Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkēvičs. He told CNBC that “all those voices who are saying that we probably should have some kind of political process, talks or discussions, they somehow don’t hear what Mr. Putin is saying,” Rinkēvičs told CNBC on Tuesday.

A meeting of national security advisors was held in Davos last Sunday with a focus on Ukraine’s 10-point peace formula. Russia was not invited to the talks, however, and has previously described them as “absurd.”

When asked to comment on Sunday’s talks, the Kremlin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told CNBC, “We find these negotiations strange without our participation. They have no prospects for success.”

Read more on the story here: ‘Perfectly understandable’: Russia’s neighbors back Ukraine’s refusal to negotiate on peace talks

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked to CNBC about his meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Davos on Tuesday.

“We need to make sure that with Congress, we get the supplemental funding that President Biden’s asked for, we’re working very hard on that,” he said.

Blinken said he believed there was bipartisan support for this in both Houses but explained that this would be an issue if the funds were not secured.

“Look there’s no magic pot of money — if we don’t get that money, it’s a real problem,” he said.

— Vicky McKeever

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday it was “impossible” to take away from Russia the military gains it had made in Ukraine.

Talking about possible peace talks, Putin also said in televised comments that ideas put forward by Ukraine were “prohibitive formulas for the peace process.”

-Reuters

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday decried the failure of Western allies to sanction Russia’s nuclear industry.

In a special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelenskyy said President Vladimir Putin had shown himself a “terrorist” after Russian forces seized Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in 2022.

“It’s a clear weakness of the West that Russia’s nuclear industry is still not under global sanctions, even though Putin is the only terrorist in the world who took a nuclear power plant hostage,” Zelenskyy said.

Tensions around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have persisted throughout the war with Russia and Ukraine accusing each other of endangering the safety and security of the plant during missile strikes around the facility.

Though the European Union has largely weaned itself off Russian fossil fuels, it has found it harder to shake ties with the country’s civil nuclear industry, which is a key energy source for several eastern European countries.

— Karen Gilchrist

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stolen years of peace and threatens not just Ukraine but the wider world, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the World Economic Forum Tuesday.

“One man has stolen at least 13 years of peace, replacing them with pain, pain, pain and crisis that impact the entire world,” Zelenskyy told delegates in a keynote speech in Davos.

Saying Putin “embodies war,” Zelenskyy said “he will not change.”

Ukraine’s relationship with Russia started to deteriorate following the election of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010. He was in office until 2014, when pro-European and anti-Russian protests swept across Ukraine, leading to his removal from power, a move that angered Moscow. Russia accused the West of orchestrating a coup in Ukraine, which it denied, and soon after invaded and annexed Crimea. Russia also supported pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine before it invaded the country in 2022.

Zelenskyy said that anyone who believed the war would be contained to Ukraine was mistaken, warning it could easily spread beyond the country’s borders.

The president met international investors in Davos earlier Tuesday, pressing Ukraine’s case for private investment. The forum is an opportunity for Zelenskyy to plead Ukraine’s case for continuing military and humanitarian aid in front of dozens of heads of state and government, as well as business leaders.

The forum comes at a time when ongoing support for Kyiv looks shaky, given increasing war fatigue and forthcoming elections in the European Parliament and U.S. that could change the dial on military aid.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with JPMorgan’s management and other international investors in Davos Tuesday.

“It is important for us to attract private capital to the reconstruction of Ukraine. We hope that JPMorgan will help attract a large number of global investors and corporations to the Ukrainian economy,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s presidential office released a statement saying that the president had “met with the largest financial funds in the world” Tuesday.

The meeting was also attended by the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, James Dimon, and other members of the management team, as well as U.S. Special Representative for Economic Recovery of Ukraine Penny Pritzker.

The Vice Chairman of BlackRock Philip Hildebrand also attended as well as the founder of Bridgewater Associates Ray Dalio, the co-founder and co-chairman of the private investment company The Carlyle Group, David Rubinstein, founder and owner of Dell, Michael Dell, head of the investment company Blackstone Group, Stephen Schwartzman, Australian entrepreneur Andrew Forrest and the founder of ArcelorMittal, Lakshmi Mittal.

Zelenskyy discussed “the importance of attracting private capital to projects for the reconstruction of Ukraine,” the statement said.

He also emphasized the importance of developing and implementing “blended financing mechanisms that combine private and public capital.”

“This is where we see your direct role right now. I know that you are actively cooperating with our team. I look forward to a concrete result,” Zelenskyy told business leaders.

— Holly Ellyatt