Fears of a second Russian invasion of Ukraine in the new year

One of Ukraine’s most senior military officers yesterday warned of a huge Russian offensive in the new year.

Major General Andrii Kovalchuk revealed intelligence suggests Vladimir Putin intends to try again to invade from the north – around the anniversary of its first, failed attempt to seize Kyiv in February.

He predicted Russian forces could attempt to invade from the north, the east and the south, maybe even on February 24, the anniversary of the original invasion.

Kovalchuk said: “We are preparing for it. We live with the thought that they will attack again. This is our task. We are considering a possible offensive from Belarus at the end of February, maybe later. We are preparing for it. We are investigating.”

Asked if he was expecting the mobilisation of millions, Kovalchuk said: “I think Putin is thinking about it. And we cannot rule out such an option. We have to be ready for it. I believe that our position and the position of our partners today should be clear.

“If Putin carries out a full mobilisation, our partners are ready to provide us with all the force and means to stop not an army of 300,000, but an army of a million.”

The news came after a child was killed in a Russian missile strike. The two-year-old boy was pulled from the rubble in a pre-dawn search yesterday following the attack which hit a block of flats in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.

Four people were killed and 13 injured, four of them children, authorities said. The UK’s Ministry of Defence said: “In recent days there has been an uptick in Russia’s campaign of long-range strikes against Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure.

“The waves of strikes have largely consisted of air and maritime-launched cruise missiles but have almost certainly also included Iranian-provided uncrewed aerial vehicles being launched from Russia’s Krasnodar region.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has asked for an assessment of the progress of the war in Ukraine with senior figures suggesting he may adopt a more cautious approach compared to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

One Whitehall source said: “Wars are won on instinct. At the start of this it was Boris Johnson sitting down and saying: ‘Let’s just go for this.’ So Rishi needs to channel his inner Boris on foreign policy though not of course on anything else.”

The source said the audit would assess the significance of the UK’s military contributions in Ukraine.

SNP MP Stewart McDonald has called on the UK Government to join the international community in backing the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.