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A Russian company said today it will offer five million rubles (£58,000) in cash to the first soldiers to destroying or capturing Western tanks in Ukraine after the Kremlin promised that any Allied armored vehicles sent to Kyiv would be “burned”.
The United States, Germany and more Western allies are lining up to join Britain in sending dozens of heavy tanks to Ukraine in the coming months to help boost the country’s military capability as the war draws to a close. 12 months.
The decision by the NATO allies has been criticized by the Kremlin as a dangerous escalation, with Moscow warning that the new Western supplies “will burn like all the others”.
Now a Russian company, Fores, a Ural-based company that makes proppant for the energy industry, is offering cash payments to Russian military members who “capture or destroy” German-made Leopard 2 or American-made Abrams tanks.
A self-propelled howitzer is seen on a road near the front line, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Sunday.
Berlin will initially supply at least 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine (archive image)
Washington is sending 31 of its fast-moving M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine (file image)
The company said it will pay 5 million rubles (58,000 British pounds) to the first Russian soldier to destroy one of the tanks and 500,000 rubles (5,800 British pounds) for all subsequent attacks.
Echoing language used by Russian officials and pro-war state TV presenters, Fores said NATO was pumping Ukraine with an “unlimited” amount of weapons and escalating the conflict.
It also said it would pay a reward of 15 million rubles (£174,200) for Western-made fighter jets, should they reach Ukraine.
Washington is sending 31 of its fast-moving M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, while Berlin will initially supply at least 14 Leopard 2 tanks and give permission to other NATO countries, including Poland, Norway, Finland and Spain, to deliver theirs to Kyiv.
The UK has already said it will send 14 Challenger 2 tanks and Ukrainian troops landed in Britain on Saturday to learn how to use the next-generation battle tanks against Russian soldiers.
While various countries have promised a total of 321 heavy tanks to Ukraine, according to Kyiv’s ambassador to France, it could take months for them to appear on the battlefield.
Ukraine wants to speed up the delivery of heavy weapons as both sides of the war are expected to launch spring offensives in the coming weeks.
Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergey Nechayev, said last week that Berlin’s decision to send Leopald II tanks to Ukraine was “extremely dangerous.”
He said that it “brings the conflict to a new level of confrontation and contradicts the statements of German politicians about their reluctance to get involved in it.”
Meanwhile, France has yet to commit to sending a squadron of its Leclerc tanks, but President Emmanuel Macron is now under pressure to match his allies’ offer of heavy armor.
On the battlefront in Ukraine, fighting continued in the eastern Donetsk region, with Russia again shelling the key city of Vuhledar.
Ukraine had been relying on Soviet-era T-72 tanks, but its army will be modernized with the shipment of NATO vehicles.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine faced a difficult situation in Donetsk and needed faster arms supplies and new types of weaponry, just days after the allies agreed to provide Kyiv with heavy battle tanks.
‘The situation is very tough. Bakhmut, Vuhledar and other sectors in the Donetsk region: there are constant Russian attacks,” Zelenskiy said in a video address Sunday night.
Russia wants the war to drag on and exhaust our forces. So we have to make time our weapon. We have to speed up events, speed up supplies and open up new weapons options for Ukraine.”
There are also ongoing talks between Kyiv and its allies over Ukraine’s requests for long-range missiles, a top adviser to Zelenskiy said on Saturday. Ukraine has also ordered American F16 fighter jets.
German arms maker Rheinmetall is ready to greatly increase production of tank and artillery ammunition to meet demand in Ukraine and the West, and may start producing HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in Germany, CEO Armin Papperger told Reuters.
HIMARS systems are currently manufactured in the United States and have been used by the Ukrainian military to devastating effect.
Since the start of the conflict, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed to have destroyed hundreds of pieces of Western weaponry in Ukraine.
Kyiv has previously dismissed such claims, noting, for example, that Russia has claimed to have destroyed more US-made HIMARS rocket launch platforms than were delivered to the country.
Previous deliveries of advanced Western weapons, particularly HIMARS, have been credited with turning the tide of the 11-month war, helping Kyiv secure a series of surprise victories, and driving Russian forces back from territory captured at the start of the invasion. .
Meanwhile, Russian missile strikes killed three people and injured six more in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Sunday night. The shelling damaged a hospital, a school, a bus station, a post office, a bank, and residential buildings.
Among the reported injuries were two women in the hospital at the time: a nurse and a cafeteria worker.
Ukrainian firefighters work on a burning house after Russian shelling in the city of Kherson on Sunday.
– Ukrainian medics carry the body of a local resident killed in a residential building after a Russian shelling in Kherson on Sunday.
Russian troops had occupied Kherson shortly after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, holding the city until Ukrainian forces recaptured it in November.
Since its liberation, the city has been regularly shelled from Russian positions across the Dnipro River.
Later on Sunday, a missile struck an apartment building in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, killing an elderly woman, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Monday that Ukrainian troops had repelled a Russian attack on Bakhmut, the focus of Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, and several other cities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
A Ukrainian military statement issued the night before had noted the intensification of fighting in Vuhledar, southwest of Bakhmut, in recent days.
Denis Pushilin, the administrator of the Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk, said on Monday that his forces had gained a foothold in Vuhledar, the Russian news agency TASS reported.
Ukrainian colonel and military analyst Mykola Salamakha told Ukrainian Radio NV that Russian troops were mounting waves of attacks on Vuhledar.
“From this location we control practically the entire railway system used by the Russians for logistics… The city is on a mountain and an extremely strong defensive axis has been created there,” he said.
“This is a repeat of the situation in Bakhmut: one wave of Russian troops after another crushed by the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited South Korea, a US ally and a major arms exporter, on Monday and urged Seoul to increase military support for Ukraine.
Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Monday that since the United States had decided to supply Ukraine with tanks, there was no point in Russia talking to Kyiv or its Western “puppets.”
However, on Sunday, a Kremlin spokesman told RIA that Russian President Vladimir Putin was open to contacts with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Scholz was quoted by the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Sunday as saying: “I will also talk to Putin again because it is necessary to talk.”
“The onus is on Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine to end this horrendous and senseless war that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives,” he added.