Ukraine Update…410 days into the Russian move on the Ukraine…More on the Leak….An a Arrest….

In relation to those leaks, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested by the FBI on Thursday.

Two U.S. citizens have died in Ukraine, the State Department said Wednesday, without disclosing their identities or the circumstances of their deaths. ABC News reported that they were volunteer fighters who died in separate clashes with Russian forces.

Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

• The suspected leaker of the documents, Jack Teixeira, was arrested Thursday afternoon. Teixeira is a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. He shared the documents with a small group of roughly two dozen people — mostly men and boys united by a mutual love of guns, military gear and God — on Discord, a platform popular with gamers, a group member told the The Washington Post.
• A stalemate in the war, with neither Russia nor Ukraine achieving a decisive advantage this year, is the most likely scenario, a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggests. The agency predicted a costly and slow conflict, with both sides making only marginal gains. On Thursday, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the Kremlin “dreams” of such a scenario.
• The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group appeared to dismiss the leaked documents as inconsequential. In comments to reporters shared on a Wagner-linked Telegram channel, Yevgeniy Prigozhin said top Wagner officials met Thursday to discuss the documents and concluded they were “leaked deliberately, in order to ask certain questions.” He described the documents using a Soviet-era idiom that conveys the idea of a warning with no real consequences.
• President Biden on Thursday downplayed the fallout from the leaked secrets. “I’m not concerned about the leak because — I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence,” Biden told reporters during his trip to Dublin….

• The Russian general prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into a video of an apparent beheading of a Ukrainian fighter that was shared on Russian-language Telegram channels, the office said in a Telegram post.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for international action, and the United Nations demanded an investigation into the “brutal execution.” The video, which shows a Russian-speaking soldier in a mask decapitating a prisoner with a knife, was not independently verified by The Post.
• Russia accused a Ukrainian national of coordinating the bombing that killed pro-Kremlin blogger Maxim Fomin, who was also known as Vladlen Tatarsky. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that Yury Denisov, who it said was a Ukrainian citizen, worked with a Russian woman, Daria Trepova, to plan the attack that killed Fomin and injured at least 30 others in a St. Petersburg cafe. The FSB alleged that Denisov gave Trepova “an explosive device hidden in a plaster bust” of Fomin in a Thursday statement.
• Ukraine’s foreign minister said Kyiv won’t back down from its demand that Russia withdraw from Crimea. “Every time you hear anyone from any corner of the world saying that Crimea is somehow special and should not be returned to Ukraine, as any other part of our territory, you have to know one thing: Ukraine categorically disagrees with these statements,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said via video link to the Black Sea security conference being held in Bucharest, Romania, on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014. Kuleba also said NATO should play a bigger role in security in the Black Sea, according to Reuters. Fighting has raged along the Ukrainian coast since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded during a briefing in Moscow Thursday that “the Black Sea can never be a NATO sea,” Reuters reported.

• Russian shelling killed one person and wounded two in Kherson, the southern region’s governor wrote on Telegram early Thursday. According to Oleksandr Prokudin, Russia shelled residential areas of the region 46 times over the past day. Separately, Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region killed one civilian and injured two, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram post Thursday.
• The United States and its partners will help meet Ukraine’s defense needs through spring and beyond, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated in a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. Ukraine needs “more air defense systems” and “heavy artillery, mortars and ammunition,” Shmyhal said, adding that Washington should again consider providing longer-range missiles to Ukraine.
• Prigozhin, the Wagner head, claimed his forces control 80 percent of the city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months, according to Reuters. But Ukraine’s deputy defense minister insisted on Telegram that Kyiv’s fighters are still holding off the invasion force. Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday on Telegram that its troops had encircled Bakhmut and cut off Ukrainian supply lines to the embattled city. Serhii Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces, denied that claim in comments to The Post. “Yes, there are fierce, heavy battles with the overwhelming forces of the enemy, but the enemy has not reached a strategic turning point,” he said.

• Germany approved Poland’s application to hand over five MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. The announcement Thursday paves the way for Warsaw to re-export five of the Soviet-designed jets from the stocks of the former East German army. During Zelensky’s visit to Warsaw last week, Polish President Andrzej Duda promised he would deliver Poland’s MiG-29s to Ukraine. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement that the German government had received the application from Poland only on Thursday. “This shows: Germany can be relied upon!” he said of Berlin’s swift approval.
• Norway will expel 15 diplomats from the Russian Embassy in Oslo, officials announced Thursday. Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said the government has declared the individuals personae non gratae, adding: “We will not allow Russian intelligence officers to operate under diplomatic cover in Norway.” European nations expelled hundreds of personnelfrom Russian embassies in the weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin critic imprisoned in Russia, has lost more than 17 pounds in two weeks, and his health is worsening every day, his spokeswoman said on Twitter.
• Poland is looking to set up maintenance and repair plants for U.S.-made Abrams tanks in Europe, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said during a visit to the United States, according to Polish media. The country also wants to produce depleted uranium rounds for the tanks, which can help them better destroy other armored vehicles…..

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