ah ah ah, this is dw, live from berlin, russia tax ukraine as the west promises more military support. ukrainian to take to bomb shelters of mid april raj of missile and drove attacks. the strikes a day after germany and the u. s. pledge to send tanks to the brain. also coming up

. moscow reacts the fury to berlin at washington's announcements of tank deliveries that shows no sign of back down. we take a look at the weapons. russia has at its disposal and a deadly cold snap sweep across asia from afghanistan to japan, sub 0 temperatures and heavy snow are causing chaos per 1000000. ah, i'm sorry, kelly, welcome to the program. at least one person has been killed and others are injured after russian forces fired more than 30 missiles at several targets across ukraine . officials told residents to remain in shelters. 15 of the drones were down around the capitol cave. the mayor confirmed a huge explosion. the attacks on the day after germany and the united states

announced plans to supply ukraine with modern battle tanks. years after days of diplomatic wrangling, 2 big announcements from either side of the atlantic to day to day i'm announcing at the united states will be send you 31 abrams tanks to ukraine. equivalent of one ukrainian battalion surgery austin has recommended to step because on hansley kranz capacity and finished her turn achieve their strategic objectives. the u. s. president statement came just hours after germany announced it would deliver 14 of its leopard to battle tanks to ukraine. ok, does this does a given us, this is the result of renewed and intense consultations with our allies and international partners, as i would like to underline without it was right. and it is right that we didn't let ourselves be forced into action. now that we instead counted and will continue

to count on closed corporation on these issues, international pressure had been growing in germany to agree to send la, to tangs to ukraine, or to at least lift an export ban on the german may tanks. so other countries could supply them that last week, meeting of defense leaders from more than 50 countries at ramstein air base and germany failed to produce any agreements chance loan of shows was unwilling to send german tanks unless the u. s. made a similar commitment. that diplomatic gamble seemingly paid off the agreement to supply the tangs as a huge political turnaround for germany. and it's a major boost for ukraine. western battle tanks like the leopard and the abraham's or what ukrainian president followed him. he is a lensky, has long been pleading for and many say they could be a game changer in the wall. because i am grateful to all our allies of

our willingness to provide us with modern and much needed tanks over his proofs for most important fat for a while to day. for fat for freedom is only getting stronger on the way we are all working together to strength and freedom to defend ukraine in europe is a historic achievement of a part of a leaders who are working on it right now. that zalinski also stressed that speed as now key. while the 1st leopard tangs could arrive in ukraine and the next 2 to 3 months. the white house has already said that it will likely be many more months before it's abrams tanks will arrive at the front. and earlier i spoke with d. w. correspond mathias ballinger about the new missile attacks on ukraine this morning. he was in chief yeah, it was another attack with misses and with jones are pretty much what we've seen

before. major cities targeted in ukraine. that means the capital. and also cities like odessa, as a foreclosure or there have been explosions in these 3 cities in odessa. we're hearing that or some energy infrastructure was hit again and that there are consequences, meaning power is cut off and part of the city and water supply here. and key of we heard an explosion earlier. it seems that a rocket was shot down upon entering into the air space above the city. and it fell on to a building um, a non residential building. that's what the authorities have said. a one person has died and 2 were injured. that's what we know. so far a lot of misses we're flying again. same pattern from a shot from planes are and many of them were intercepted. we have heard that are the authorities have been seeing that 15 massage flying on to keep have been

intercepted, but there's always an amount of rockets that make it through and that hit targets within the country within the cities and mathias, what are we to make of the timing of this most recent strikes, especially given an that we had the announcement of the u as in germany sending tank. steve graham was very likely that this is a reaction to that or the russians. they need time to prepare these kind of attacks, but they did half time considering that everybody was expecting this decision for some days now. so it's pretty likely that they have timed this attack or to come after these decisions. they have been furious at these decisions, but of course there's never any proof for these theories, a lot of talk and that both sides are preparing a so called a spring offensive encounter offensive. tell us a little bit more about the details in terms of what you're hearing. yeah,

of course, there are not, not really any details known and light. is it kind of in the nature of things are that are, are these plans are not disclosed before? they are happening, but we have been hearing about both military experts have said that spring would be a time when to expect another offensive or by either side. or we have heard speculation maricia my too much on keith again from the beller russian side. but that's at the moment sir, seems to be very speculative. western services have not seen the preparations necessary. the mass deployments necessary in belarus should make another attempt. and of course, within the russian military or somebody planning such an offensive would have to explain why this time it would work out. give is a big city. it's difficult. it would be very difficult to enter the city, considering that russia has tried for

a month now to enter the much smaller town of baltimore than although they have made some advances. are deb capabilities are not that high for the ukrainian side? expectations are that there will be another counter offensive or when the weather conditions get better when they are and, and possibly also after these tanks arrive. because these tanks, they are of course critical to the planning tanks are what breaks through the enemy lines. they are crucial in offensive operations. ukraine has so far sad that it had been held back by having not enough tanks at the hand and not enough advanced tanks at the hand. and they could have achieved much more. we will see, of course, whether this is true after the tanks arrive and we don't really know about the timeline, whether they will he not have enough of them. but one expectation is that the next target that ukraine might attempt at it would be in the south in as a board is your region. that would be a very valuable area for ukraine to make gains,

because that's the connection between crimea and the hassan oblong on the one hand . and the a don boss on the other hand. and it would disrupt russian operations probably to march into their matthias bollinger. and keith, thank you. while several other countries will join the u. s. and germany and sending tanks to ukraine, the additional weapons could play a vital role in keith's efforts to repel the russian invasion at russia, showing no signs of back down. analysts say it's lang the groundwork for a new offensive in the spring. here's a look at some of the weapon trade that russia has as the disposal. since the end of world war 2, russia has held the title as the 2nd strongest, global military. after the united states, before its invasion of ukraine, russia claimed nearly 1000000 personnel, 1500 combat aircraft, 7600 pieces of artillery,

and the largest tank force of any army in the world at 12400 units. russia was a formidable force on paper, at least following its failure to reach kia in the 1st few weeks of the war. many western analysts have come to doubt that russia's military was ever as strong as a claim to be. eventually, president bowden. russia will realize the full extent of their strategic miscalculation outside of moscow little is known about the current size of russia's arsenal. but what it's brought out on the battlefield has been largely catalogue by investigative journalists. dutch researchers from the outlet or x have documented that russia has lost at least 69 aircraft, 560 artillery pieces, and 1600 tanks. the u. s. military however, claims that russia may have lost as much as half of its tanks. so far, some analysts point to russia's use in ukraine of the t $62.00 tank as evidence that it's armory is in dire straits. the t $62.00 is a relic,

introduced while the berlin wall was under construction. this photo, as from a russian museum of military history, ukraine's government has also claimed that moscow will eventually run out of long range missiles, seeing russian factories can not replenish the stockpiles. yet their estimates from november were proven too optimistic when russia stepped up. it's long range bombing campaign. in the last weeks of 2022. building a bomb takes longer than dropping one. but the kremlin says weapons factories are working overtime, quite literally to supply its invading forces. hootin recently visited in arms manufacturer praising the workers, hooker, circling all this can only inspire confidence that victory will be ours for ukraine's part with so many of its factories and depots, destroyed. its best chance to counter russia's military might,

is to keep supplies flowing from its international partners. and let's get more on that. we are joined by mike martin, senior visiting research fellow in the department of war studies at kings college in london. welcome to the program and, and thank you so much for joining us. how strong do you think the russian military is at the moment after nearly one year of its invasion of ukraine? i think the russian military has gotten a lot of manpower and we hadn't do so the mobilization in the also and we've got a further mobilization going on now much that is poorly trained in a full morale on this severely lacking in advanced equipment of the type that ukraine is fielding ukraine says, and you, you mentioned the, the previous mobilization ukraine says that it thinks russia plans to mobilize an additional $500000.00 soldiers. and so i'm wondering, you know, when you stack that up, for example, against the new tank commitments from the west to counter any fresh russian

offensive. how, how do you think the calculus turns out there? i think the answer this lies in the different stalls of warfare. so what russia is trying to do is generate a huge army, as we said poorly trained and they were fighting attrition, no trench style, you know, martin, blood and guts type of war fact. where's ukraine has already demonstrated its ability to conduct maneuver warfare, so destroying the russian supply lines nipping around the back. and that's exactly what these tanks will do. so i think they will make a difference because they'll enable ukraine to punch through the russian lines and to maneuver behind them. and russia can't really respond to that because it doesn't have the level of training or the mechanization of its forces. how quickly do you think that difference can be made from what you know about how long it takes to train the ukrainians, for example, to deliver such weapon tree? when do you think we could start to see results? i think that really this political decision was made at the law safe moment.

obviously we're not going to train ukrainians on the phone, you know, 6 months training course or whatever. what are the bad things that need to be done? the secret equipment that the west has in these times needs to be stripped out before they go to the crane, then the ukrainians need to be trained on them in some a poland. you can probably do that in a couple of weeks. and then the whole, la cruz and the tanks and the logistics pipeline leads me to ukraine. i think 6 to 8 weeks is the minimum time frame that they can do that. ok, meantime russia has called the western tanks for cave, quote, a blatant provocation. what sort of possible retaliation do you think can be expected? well, usually what russia does and you know, russia said everything's a place in publication. i mean, invited ukraine. what's gonna happen is they're going to noise off like they're doing now, and then they're going to bomb some civilian at, you know, blocks of flats or whatever in retaliation. that's really important because there's

no way that they can go militarily. they can't up the stakes militarily. they're not going to the neighboring countries. right? but mike, i just want to follow up and pick apart what you just said there. because i mean, one of the big concerns, you know, examples that they could escalate towards nuclear perhaps in the form of a tactical nuclear weapon, or that this conflict could indeed escalate to directly involve nato member. so given this most recent decision, how high do you see those risks? so, is russia going to allow the conflict to widen, into a se, poland, which is covered by the night article 5 security guarantee drugs in america? we have the western states. absolutely not. it russia is absolutely very k as nice . there is to avoid that. that would be the end of the war in mesa, cyber. and in terms of nuclear, we've seen nuclear threats from russia throughout the conflict. and they've tailed off recently and the way they've tied. the reason they towed off recently is because the west call that bluff and said,

you don't want to use nuclear. the cold war, the rule still existed. short destruction stopped talking about nuclear and russia has stopped talking about it. ok, mike martin, senior visiting research fellow in the department of war study i king's college london. thank you so much for joining us to share that expertise in that perspective. thank germany's defense minister boris pastorius is visiting bundeswehr troops in the 1st time since taking on his new role. the minister met with the soldiers in alton grumbalo, military training area in the eastern german state of saxony on halt. he confirmed that german made leopard tanks are due to arrive in ukraine sometime in late march, or early april and on site for us there we have t w's, benjamin alvarez gruber, benjamin. and thanks for joining us. how has germany's decision to send tanks to ukraine gone down there?

we understand the defense minister gave a statement. what more did he have to say? he sat he, once again m talked about the criticism that the german chancellor shows was too late with the decision to sent the german tanks and he sat expected. would you just mention that they could be in ukraine by the end of march or early april, that there will be the training now there. and the idea of this visit that comes on the 7th day in off. it is talking to the soldiers. he said there was a very important to talk to them to know exactly what the problem saw that they are facing. and to get this inside, he oversaw several exercise of shooting exercises with a small, a guns with rifles, but also with the puma. that's an infantry vehicle of the drum and armed forces to then say that it's important to keep in touch and to also help them for everything . handing over weapons to ukraine. ah, you know, there are some reports that that could cause gaps in already existing replacement

deficits. has the defense minister clarified how he might handle that? and those are not just reports. he said that it's a pretty difficult balance that he has. those are conflicting goals on one side, as you rightly mentioned, to get new weapons for the bonus there also to try to reduce the time for them to get this new weapon system. one of the question was also, if germany was already getting the weapons that it already had sent to ukraine, and of course, when it comes to the leper tanks of germany will sent it to ukraine. a that's also the question what germany will do to get them as soon as possible. he said that he will try to find that balance on one side of getting those new weapon system and on the other side of supplying ukraine with weapons. he also mentioned a case and said it is not possible to tell ukraine that we would, the germany will not supply them with weapons any more as it 1st needs to take care of. that bond is vested, but he said that it is

a problem that and we have seen for many, many years now with a set status of the bonus where that many equipment is still needed it for the armed forces. so it's a really, really important task for him, but as i just mentioned, he has been in office for a week and he wanted to give the soldiers the sense that he will give them everything that they need that the same time while supporting ukraine. also to defend itself against russia. t debby, as benjamin our as glover in alton. bravo, germany, thank you for your reporting and deadly cold. snap is sweeping across asia, causing record low temperatures and disruption. the freezing weather has effected millions of people from japan and south korea to afghanistan, which is experiencing its coldest winter in 15 years. people in china's northernmost city more he and no strangers to the cold. the temperature here can stay below freezing for up to 8 months of the year. but this week things are

especially chile, temperatures plunged to minus 53 degrees celsius. it's coldest day ever recorded with yet. so northern china has been hit hard by the freezing front, affecting asia roads are covered in snow rail tracks, a frozen with thick ice. jolene broad co here and junk. a cycling isn't an option either. the cold sweep has caused sea ice and northeastern li alden bay to expand rapidly. it's not just china that's freezing. japan is also experiencing record low temperatures. heavy snow is blanketing large parts of the country with $93.00 seem to meters falling on the city of money. we're in just 24 hours in south korea, nearly $500.00 flights in and out of the resort island jazz. you were cancelled on

tuesday to, to the wither. meanwhile, and central asia. the weather is proving deeply in afghanistan, temperatures have dropped to minus $34.00 degrees in parts. and more than a 120 people are reported to have died. we are having so many problems with this cold weather. we have no call, no stove, and our children have no warm clothes. the cold is deepening, the humanitarian crisis, facing the country. since the taliban took control, the afghan winter makes everything a lot more difficult and we're very conscious of the season of the timing. as you say, we see some of the consequences, loss of life. this is where the, the context of 6000000 people. it's an astonishing number of people, knock it on famines door, the better temperatures, the plunging match of afghanistan,

struggling population further into poverty. is he a max the hashes, winter, and a long time and large parts of asia and for the millions affected spring can't come soon enough. and frank smith as an independent journalist reporting from sol joining us now. how bad is the situation where you are? where we and temperatures down to minus 25, with wind chill down to minus 28. sometimes these, these stories can hit home. i live in a high rise building. a newer building can finish just just a couple of years ago in my lobby there washrooms, the pipes froze in those washrooms, then burst with water flooding a quite a large area of the lobby in then freezing, creating kind of an ice rink down there as your report mentioned on change, you island they got dumped with, with buckets and buckets of snow had to had to cancel flights. those have been resume though air traffic's been resumed. so they're bringing flights into in china

and get po, airports around the capital, staying open for that, you know, really busy flight quarter, especially during this holiday season to get people back to work. so what about yeah, how long is it expected to last? well over the next couple of days it, it's going to remain this cold through to saturday and then a warm up a bit might get another dump of precipitation on, on sunday, but it will warm up somewhat up in north korea. it's a different situation there. north ham, young and south ham young provinces, those provinces that border russia, they are threatened to experience this cold weather a bit more. and it could be a bigger problem if you've ever seen a satellite image of, of the korean peninsula or the region at night. you know that electricity out of the capital pyongyang is,

is somewhat rare. so there are concerns that we're going to see some, some problems there, especially considering north korea also has trouble in terms of, of food security and had some reports last year of people going missing and, and freezing in the cold weather there. sir. frank smith, freelance journalist reporting from soul on this extreme weather that we are seeing where you are. thank you so much for joining us. sports news and in the bone to see got dormant, paid a visit to mites. on wednesday, the hosts have struggled to make gains the season, but they had dorman deadlocked until the very last minute. that's when american g a re not scored another winner to give them a to one victory. i don't them lined up in mind snowing. they had to attack the men in read without their best known defender. woke up when am at schools was dropped, heading to the bench, wondering how his side would confront a long held weakness in defending set paces without him. it took 2 minutes to get

the answer. not well. ah. an early blow pleased the manager, jason lea squeezing his head or in at the neopost. mine had made the perfect start that stirred the visitors into action. just 2 minutes later norwegian julian rice and had time to try his luck from distance. 11 after 4 minutes, the reply revealing his luck was most definitely in both fence and huffed and puffed pleading for a month's hero. dockman brought one of the bench, sebastian helen on light as he continues to take steps on the way back from kansas surgery. but he wasn't to be the hero this time. that on felt the same man. who did it last time. g, a reiner with his 2nd game winning strike in just 5 days. dockman climbing the table once more and the young american is again

a heath. and also on wednesday, fryeburg and frankfort had to settle for a point each when they played 2, a one all draw randall column. lonny opened the scoring for frankfort a few minutes before half time, france international banging in his 6th goal of the campaign in style. there and then shortly after the restart, fryeburg mathias into headed home to love the score christian dinner with a perfect cross and didn't, and providing he knows how to use his hand. well also the international olympic committee has opened the way for russian and bellow of seeing athletes to compete at next year's paris olympics. the i o. c says that no athlete should be prevented from taking part because of their nationality and suggested that athletes could qualify for the games as neutrals. many sports

currently exclude russian and belarus in athletes because of russia's invasion of ukraine. here watching dw news, a quick reminder of our top story, there has been a fresh wave of missile attacks and ukraine as the west promises more military support. ukrainians taken to bomb shelters, and made a barrage of missiles and drone attacks after germany and the u. s. pledge to send text to ukraine of next focus on europe. stay with us. if you can. i'm sarah kelly in berlin. take care. ah ah, ah ah. and with

signaling latvia, he had to beat scott is worry about rushing propaganda spreading like please will to sins media will divide the country after all,

every 4th person here has russian roots and nearly everyone has a tv with conflict. so refresh, banner g, belittles, has supported russia since the start of the war in ukraine. what is the support to be sent to escalate into something more active from that? we are shortcut. he's chief political advisor to berlin, ocean opposition leader trip lamasta's office. kyra, she claims to be the national leader of bella luce, but home. the gentleman is her claim. conflict in 60 minutes on the w. o. a t o davinci, mysterious masterpiece. this perhaps the greatest leonardo masterpiece and the

collection of the louvre and no, it is not the mona lisa. it is the virgin of the rocks, 2 versions, multiple copies, and a hidden drawing. was there another symbolic meaning to this beautiful painting that perhaps we just don't understand today? search for answers starts february 10th on d, w. ah, hello and welcome to focus on europe. it's good to have you with us. there's no end in sight to the warren ukraine. almost a year has passed since the war big.