Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - January 26

I've neglected to mention this last week, but:

People in Russia have been attending impromptu memorials in honor of those killed in the January 14 apartment building strike in Dnipro. It started off as laying of flowers at the Moscow statue of Lesya Ukrainka: a prominent Ukrainian writer and political activist. Since then, it'd moved to statues of other prominent Ukrainian persons, such as the poet Taras Shevchenko.

The memorials have gotten enough traction amongst regular citizens that police started guarding the statues of interest and arresting those who pass by, sometimes even random citizens walking their dogs.

While initially most of the memorials had been organized in Moscow, there's now one in Perm [here and further in the paragraph — source in Russian] (next to the actual memorial to victims of political repressions), in Ivanovo, in Kazan, in Saint-Petersburg, in Samara, in Yekaterinburg, in Tver, in Novosibirsk, and in Krasnodar.

Canada to send 4 combat-ready Leopard 2 A4 tanks to Ukraine in the coming weeks

With Germany planning on sending 14 Leopard 2 A6s, and the US sending 31 Abrams eventually, this new announcement isn't much in comparison, but every little bit helps.

Short on time, Biden sought new Ukraine tank plan to break stalemate (Washington Post)

The longer the increasingly public disagreement over tanks went on, Biden worried, the more damage it was doing to his top priority on Ukraine: maintaining U.S.-led Western unity in the face of Russian aggression. Military leaders from the dozens of countries supporting Ukraine were meeting in three days at the U.S. base in Germany, and everybody wanted an answer to the tank dispute.

[…]

[US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin] considered the Abrams M1s operationally and logistically too difficult. He thought Kyiv already had enough Soviet-era models — hundreds taken from its own arsenals, captured from retreating Russians, or donated by other NATO members that were once part of the Soviet bloc. As far as he was concerned, the U.S. tanks were out of the question.

A retired Army general who helped lead the 3rd Infantry Division’s invasion of Iraq with M1s in 2003, Austin was convinced, a senior defense official said, that the massive battle tanks would be “impossible” for the Ukrainians to sustain and maintain. At the same time, a second defense official said, the U.S. vehicles were clad with specialized, depleted uranium armor, a classified design that no one wanted Russia to get its hands on.

[…]

Tasked with figuring out whether and how the idea would work, Sullivan spoke that afternoon with Austin about the proposed Plan B to commit to transferring Abrams tanks. The defense secretary still had concerns, but agreed to task the Pentagon with figuring out how it could be implemented.

[…]

The 31 M1A2s main battle tanks that Biden officially authorized on Tuesday would not be taken from U.S. military stockpiles, but would be procured under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. They would be built to task, without the depleted uranium armor, for delivery late this year or next.

It was enough for Berlin, and Sullivan ironed out the details with Plötner. On Wednesday morning, Scholz met with his Cabinet and delivered a speech to the Bundestag, the German parliament, announcing that two battalions of Leopards — roughly 80 — from Germany and others in Europe would go to Ukraine. Biden held a telephone conference with the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Italy,

Along front-line river, this deadly road shows toll of Russia’s war (Washington Post)

On the route traveling east and north from villages on the Gulf of the Dnieper to the battered but never-occupied city of Nikopol, the width of the river ranges from several miles to fewer than 1,000 feet, putting the Russians close enough to strike with mortars and shells or sniper fire. They hit some villages dozens of times a day. Ukrainian forces are firing back.

Before the war, the journey would have amounted to about 150 miles — and taken a few hours to drive. But with damaged roads and bridges over the river’s inlets, the journey through former Russian occupied territory has become difficult. Roads are still littered with abandoned Russian checkpoints and military equipment. Russian trenches and firing positions are dug into farmers’ fields. Signs warn of mines. At village entrances, Ukrainian troops warn the chances of being shelled are high.