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Ukraine pleaded with Western countries for more armaments and humanitarian aid as Russian forces hammered the country’s east.
Further intense combat was reported in Sievierodonetsk, a small city in eastern Ukraine that has become the focal point of Russia’s assault and one of the worst flashpoints in a war that is now in its fourth month.
According to Ukrainian officials, the fight in the east, where Russia is concentrating its efforts, has turned into predominantly an artillery struggle in which Kyiv is heavily outgunned. That means the flow of events might only be altered if Washington and others follow through on their vows to provide more and better armament, including rocket systems.
“This is now an artillery war,” Ukraine’s deputy chief of military intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, told the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom.
“Everything now is contingent on what the West provides. In comparison to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces, Ukraine has only one piece of artillery “He expressed himself.
According to Der Spiegel on Friday, Germany, which has been one of the largest suppliers of weapons since Russia’s invasion but has been chastised for being slow to deliver the heavy weaponry Kyiv claims it requires, plans to change its arms export rules to make it easier to arm democracies like Ukraine.
Cholera
To the south, the mayor of Mariupol, which has been reduced to rubble by a Russian siege, said sanitation systems had failed and bodies were decaying in the streets.
“There is a dysentery and cholera outbreak,” Vadym Boichenko said on national television. “Unfortunately, with these virus outbreaks, thousands more Mariupolites will perish,” he added, adding that some wells have been contaminated by corpses.
Boichenko has urged the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to build a humanitarian corridor to assist the city’s remaining people to flee the city, which is now under Russian authority.
Reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia, according to the UN food agency, could cause chronic hunger in up to 19 million additional people globally over the next year.
In the Ruins
Russia is planning to seize the entire eastern province of Luhansk, as well as the neighbouring city of Donetsk, which it insists Ukraine hand up to separatists. The Donbas region is made up of the two provinces, where Moscow has backed separatist proxies in a revolt since 2014.
To that goal, the Kremlin has concentrated its forces in the Luhansk city of Sievierodonetsk.
Ukrainian forces have mostly left the city’s residential neighbourhoods, but they haven’t given up their position on the Siverskiy Donets River’s east bank. Russian forces are also attempting to encircle the Ukrainians from the north and south, although with limited success.
Russia is attempting to “break every town in the Donbas,” stated President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
According to Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskiy aide, the Russian army is losing five to six times as many men as the Ukrainian army.
“Yes, something like that,” Arestovych said in a social media interview when asked if this meant the Ukrainian army had lost up to 10,000 fighters in the first 100 days of the battle.
In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a “special military operation” in Ukraine, claiming the goal was to disarm and “de-nazify” Russia’s neighbour. It is described by Kyiv and its allies as an unprovoked campaign of aggression aimed at capturing territory.
In light of Russia’s activities, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated Washington’s commitment to the area on Saturday.
“What happens when oppressors trample the laws that protect us all,” Austin said at an Asian security conference in Singapore. “It’s a glimpse into a hypothetical world of chaos and turbulence in which none of us would want to live.”
Later in the day, starting at 0800 GMT, Zelenskiy is slated to give a virtual speech to the conference.
