Jan 25 (Reuters) - Germany announced plans to deliver heavy tanks to Ukraine, and the United States was poised to do so too, a breakthrough hailed as a decisive military boost by Kyiv and condemned by Moscow as a reckless provocation.
ARMAMENTS
* Germany announced plans to send an initial company of 14 Leopard 2 tanks from its own stocks, and also approve shipments by allies who field them, with the aim of supplying Ukraine with two full battalions.
* Poland and Britain, which have pledged 14 tanks each, welcomed the decision.
* The Netherlands, Finland and Spain said they were also prepared to send tanks.
* France, which is sending lighter armoured combat vehicles, welcomed the move but did not promise to send its own tanks.
* The United States is poised to start a process that would eventually send dozens of M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, two U.S. officials told Reuters.
* Russia reacted with fury, saying Berlin was abandoning its "historical responsibility to Russia" arising from Nazi crimes in World War Two.
* Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the U.S. tanks would "burn just like all the rest".
* The Russian Defence Ministry said the frigate Admiral Gorshkov had tested its strike capabilities in the western Atlantic, running a computer simulation on hypersonic Zircon missiles.
BATTLEFIELD
* The Russian-installed governor of Ukraine's Donetsk region said units of the Wagner contract militia were advancing in the town of Bakhmut, with fighting taking place in previously Ukrainian-held neighbourhoods.
CYBER WAR
* Russian hackers knocked several German websites offline in response to Berlin's decision to send tanks to Ukraine, although Germany's BSI cyber agency said they had little tangible effect.
DIPLOMACY
* The European Court of Human Rights allowed cases brought against Russia by Ukraine and the Netherlands alleging human rights violations in the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, and the shooting down of flight MH-17.
* The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO designated the historic centre of Odesa, a port city on Ukraine's Black Sea coast, a World Heritage in Danger site.
CIVILIANS
* The Ukrainian Red Cross said it was preparing for more aid to the civil population in war zones in light of a possible new Russian offensive.
UKRAINIAN POLITICS
* Five top Ukrainian regional prosecutors were dismissed on Wednesday, a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy launched Ukraine's largest political shakeup of the war.
QUOTES
"A few hundred tanks for our tank crews .... This is what is going to become a real punching fist of democracy," Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's administration, wrote on Telegram.
"We will not become a party to the war, we will make sure of that." - German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius
"They burn just like all the rest." - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, on the prospect of U.S. tanks going to Ukraine
