Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has called on Western allies to tighten sanctions on Russia and to supply Kyiv with long-range missiles in response to the latest series of air strikes.

At least four people were killed and another 92 wounded following an attack on Tuesday that mainly targeted Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv. 

An exchange of aerial strikes has intensified in recent days as the Kremlin’s invasion approaches its third year and the ground conflict is mired in a stalemate.

Sikorski was appointed Poland’s foreign minister last month after the pro-European Union alliance of parties led by Donald Tusk unexpectedly won the 15 October parliamentary election. 

The new prime minister has pledged to rally flagging support for Ukraine among allies.

Russia, Ukraine welcome release of prisoners in major swap

Ukraine and Russia conducted the first major swap of prisoners since August, with Moscow highlighting the role of the United Arab Emirates in the negotiating process. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday hailed the release of 230 servicemen and civilians. Ukraine has now managed to return home 2,828 people since the beginning of the war, Dmytro Lubinets, the nation’s ombudsman, said on Telegram.

A total of 248 servicemen returned to Russia, which was made “possible by the humanitarian mediation of the United Arab Emirates,” the Russian Defence Ministry said on Telegram.

India says Russian oil import drop not due to payment challenges

Indian refiners reduced oil imports from Russia as discounts on cargoes weren’t attractive, according to Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who dismissed the notion that flows dropped because of payment-related challenges.

“There is no payment problem,” Puri said at a briefing in New Delhi on Wednesday, without mentioning a price cap on cargoes imposed by the Group of Seven, designed to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine. 

“It is a pure function of the price at which our refiners will buy,” Puri said.

India is one of Asia’s biggest crude importers and has emerged as a huge buyer of Russian cargoes following Moscow’s invasion, with refiners taking shipments shunned by processors in Europe and the US. 

New Delhi has said that such a stance makes sense given its huge energy requirements.

Still, imports of oil from Moscow collapsed last month to the lowest level since January 2023 as six tankers carrying Sokol grade oil from Russia’s Far East could not deliver due to payment issues amid tightening sanctions, according to data-intelligence company Kpler. 

In December, a senior US Treasury official said Washington would ramp up enforcement of the $60-a-barrel cap.

Read more here: What secondary sanctions mean, for Russia and world

“India’s leadership has only one requirement: that the Indian consumer gets the energy at the most economical price, without disruption,” Puri said. 

The country needs five million barrels of oil a day, of which 1.5 million has been coming from Russia, and that underlines there are no payment issues, he said.

Separately, Puri said that there has been no disruption to the nation’s crude supplies due to recent drone attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. 

The third-largest oil consumer has a “buyer’s position” in the market, and seeks to leverage that to get better deals, he said.

Erdoğan’s son-in-law behind Turkey’s war drones

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law, who rose to prominence over the production of combat drones, has preserved his title as the nation’s top taxpayer for a second year. 

Selcuk Bayraktar, the chief technology officer of the Baykar defence company, paid 564 million liras ($34-million) in income tax in 2022. That’s about four times the amount he paid the year before, when he was again at the top of the list of taxpayers, according to official data published on Wednesday.

Rahmi Koc, the 93-year-old honorary chairman of the country’s top conglomerate, Koc Holding, was the third top taxpayer in 2022, while the identity of the second wasn’t disclosed. 

Bayraktar is known for his company’s TB2 combat drones which have been used in several regional conflicts from Ukraine to Azerbaijan and Libya. The drones make up an essential part of Erdoğan’s push to make Turkey self-sufficient in its defence needs and his ambitions for a more assertive foreign policy.

Read more: War drones help Erdoğan expand Turkey’s global power

In a rare interview last year, Bayraktar told Bloomberg that 82% of the company’s profits over the past two decades came from exports. DM