Ukrainian President Zelensky on Monday urged the West to send him “modern” weapons to deal with Russian troops. “The Battle of Donbass will surely go down in military history as one of the most violent battles in Europe,” he said.
The human cost of the battle for the city of Severodonetsk, “for us, is very high. It is just terrifying,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in his daily address Monday evening. He insisted on the desperate need to receive these armaments, while kyiv reports 100 to 300 of its men killed every day.
“Only modern artillery will ensure our advantage,” added the 44-year-old president, saying he was confident in the ability of his army to “liberate the territory”, “including Mariupol and Crimea”. “We just need enough weapons to ensure all of this. Our partners have them,” he said.
Meeting Wednesday in Brussels
This appeal comes at a time when the allies are already supplying ammunition, spare parts and light armament to kyiv and when the contact group for Ukraine, created by the American Minister of Defense Lloyd Austin, is due to meet on Wednesday in Brussels.
Ukraine, which has exhausted its Russian and Soviet-made weaponry, now depends exclusively on weapons supplied to it by foreign allies, including Western artillery, according to US experts.
Washington began handing over to Ukraine heavy equipment such as Howitzer howitzers at first, then advanced equipment such as Himars rocket launchers, high-precision artillery pieces with a range greater than those of the Russian army.
Ukrainian forces admitted on Monday that they had abandoned the center of Severodonetsk, following a new Russian offensive on this key city in eastern Ukraine, which the two belligerents have been fighting over for weeks.
battle for the south
The capture of this city would give Moscow control of the Lugansk region and open the way to another large city, Kramatorsk, capital of the neighboring region of Donetsk, an essential step to conquer the entire Donbass basin, predominantly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
In southern Ukraine the fighting is also raging, with air battles and Russian helicopter attacks on Ukrainian positions in Mikolaiv and Kherson, according to the latest statement from the Ukrainian troop command for the south of the country, in the night from Monday to Tuesday.
In Mikolaiv, a major port on the Dnieper estuary, the Russian advance was stopped on the outskirts of the city and the Ukrainian army dug trenches there, noted an AFP team.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
