Damaged cars are parked along a road during heavy front-line fighting in Severodonetsk, Luhansk region of Ukraine, on June 8, 2022. Oleksandr Ratushniak / The Associated Press
Ukrainian officials called for more help from the West on Friday, including faster deliveries of artillery and rocket systems from the battlefield, to curb Russian forces at a critical time in the battle in the east.
Strong fighting was still being reported in Sievierodonetsk, the small town in the east that has become the focus of Russia’s advance and the site of one of the bloodiest battles of a war that has escalated. physical and financial difficulties around the world.
Chronic famine could affect up to 19 million more people worldwide over the next year due to reduced exports of wheat and other food products from Ukraine and Russia, the UN Food Agency said. United.
Within Ukraine, officials said they were concerned about the spread of deadly cholera and dysentery in the southern city of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of civilians live in ruins captured last month after being pulverized by the Russian siege.
In a speech via a video link to a democracy conference in Copenhagen, President Volodymyr Zelensky called for his country to be accepted as part of the West, with binding guarantees for its protection.
“The European Union can take a historic step that will show that the words about the people of Ukraine belonging to the European family are not just words and therefore not empty,” he said, calling on the EU to accept Ukraine’s request to be accepted. as a candidate for membership.
Ukrainian officials say the war in the east has turned mainly into an artillery battle, in which Moscow kills them severely. The tide could only be turned upside down if the West kept its promises to send more and better artillery, including the rocket systems that Washington and others have promised.
“It is now an artillery war,” Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy chief of military intelligence, said in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
“Now it all depends on what (the West) gives us,” Skibitsky said. “Ukraine has 10 to 15 pieces of Russian artillery. Our Western partners have given us about 10% of what they have.”
Russia has concentrated its forces on a battle for the city of Sievierodonetsk, hoping to capture the entire territory of the eastern Luhansk province, which demands that Ukraine surrender to the separatists along with the neighboring Donetsk province.
Ukrainian troops have largely withdrawn from the city’s residential areas, but have not given up on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets River, and have so far thwarted Russia’s efforts to encircle them. Both sides say they have caused massive casualties in the battle for the city.
Russian forces are also pushing from the north and south into the surrounding areas to try to encircle the Ukrainians, but so far they have made only limited progress. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the Russians were still trying to test Ukraine’s defenses along the river.
The Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, now operating outside the southern port, which is fully controlled by the Russians after a nearly three-month siege, said thousands more could die from cholera.
Vadym Boichenko, said Vadym Boichenko, said Vadym Boichenko.
“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera. This is, unfortunately, the assessment of our doctors. That the war that took more than 20,000 people,… unfortunately, with these outbreaks of infection, will claim thousands more mariupolites. “
President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine in February, claiming that his goal was to disarm and “deactivate” Russia’s neighbor. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.
Russian forces were defeated in March on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv and later repulsed from the second largest city in Kharkiv, but remain in control of an eastern and southern strip. They focus on the east, an area known as the Donbas, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where since 2014 they have supported a revolt of separatist powers.
Ukraine said a speech by Putin on Thursday, drawing a parallel between what he described as a new quest to reclaim Russian lands and the historic achievements of Tsar Peter the Great, showed that Moscow’s goal it was the conquest.
“Putin’s confession of the confiscations of land and the comparison with Peter the Great show that there was no ‘conflict’, only the bloody capture of the country under the pretext of popular genocide,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, Zelensky’s aide.
Volunteer drivers are risking everything to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians and take people out
The Associated Press
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