Ukraine and its Western allies are engaged in “swift” talks on the possibility of arming the invaded nation with long-range missiles and military aircraft, a top aide to Ukraine’s president has said. know Saturday.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukraine’s supporters in the West “understand how the war is developing” and the need to provide aircraft capable of supporting combat vehicles. armored fighting to which the United States and Germany were committed at the beginning of the month.
However, in a statement on the online video channel Freedom, Podolyak said that some of Ukraine’s Western partners maintain a “cautious” attitude towards arms transfers, “due to fear of changes in the structure of Ukraine.” international architecture.” Russia and North Korea have accused the West of prolonging and playing a direct role in the war by sending Kiev increasingly sophisticated weapons.
“We need to work on this. We have to show (our partners) the real picture of this war,” Podolyak said, without naming specific countries. “We have to speak logically and tell them, like, ‘This and this will reduce deaths, this will reduce the burden on infrastructure. This will reduce threats.’ security over continental Europe, which will keep the war zoned.’ And we’re doing it,”
The United States and Germany on Wednesday agreed to share advanced tanks with Ukraine along with the previously promised Bradley and Marder tanks, a decision that has led to criticism not only from the Kremlin but also from the NATO prime minister and member states. Hungarian European Union member.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban asserted on Friday that Western countries that provided arms and money to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia had “drifted” to become active participants in the conflict. Orban has refused to send weapons to neighboring Ukraine and has sought to block EU funds for military aid.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it would summon the Hungarian ambassador to complain about Orban’s remarks. Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said Orban told reporters that Ukraine is “an uninhabited land” and compared it to Afghanistan.
“Such statements are completely unacceptable. Budapest continues its journey of deliberately destroying Ukraine-Hungary relations,” Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.
President Joe Biden’s announcement that the United States would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine reversed months of Washington’s argument that they were too difficult for the Ukrainian military to operate and maintain.
The US decision convinced German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had expressed concern about unilateral action that angered Russia, to agree to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks from Germany’s stockpile and allow European countries Europe has tanks sending some of their own.
Amid news of the coordinated effort, Russia bombarded Ukraine with missiles, exploding drones, and artillery shells. The attacks continued on Saturday when Russian missiles hit the city of Kostyantynivka in Donetsk province, eastern Ukraine.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the rocket landed in a residential area, killing three civilians, injuring 14 and damaging four high-rise apartment buildings, a hotel and a garage.
“Kostyantynivka is a city relatively far from the front lines, but it is still constantly under attack from the enemy. Everyone who stays in the city puts themselves in mortal danger,” Kyrylenko said. “The Russians targeted civilians because of their inability to fight the Ukrainian army.”
In a separate Telegram post earlier on Saturday, Kyrylenko reported that Russian attacks on the province killed all 4 civilians and wounded 7 others in 24 hours.
The governor of Donestsk state said Russian missiles hit a residential area in the Donestsk town of Chasiv Yar on Friday evening, killing two people and injuring five others. Photos accompanying Kyrylenko’s post show a three-story school building on fire.
Donetsk province, whose territory is largely divided between Russian and Ukrainian control, has become the focus of the fighting as Moscow tries to launch a months-long offensive to capture the city of Bakhmut.
Chasiv Yar is located on a hill strategically located for the defense of Bakhmut, and has come under intense Russian shelling. Capturing Bakhmut would allow Russian troops to disrupt Ukraine’s supply lines and potentially pave the way for them to threaten Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the largest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the east of the country.
Russian forces continue their ground offensive around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, another city of Donetsk to the south, while Ukrainian troops are advancing in southern and northeastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said in a statement. Saturday morning update.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that Russian troops were “in self-defense” near Lyman in the Luhansk and Kharkiv provinces north of Donetsk, as well as in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces to the south.
The war has largely been stalemate over the past months, with winter conditions slowing land operations and neither side reporting significant progress.
In the same update, the military reported that Russian forces conducted 10 missile strikes, 26 air strikes and 81 artillery strikes on Ukrainian territory between Friday morning and Saturday. The shelling killed two civilians in Kherson, another province partially occupied by Russia.
Podolyak, an adviser to the president, said Ukraine needed Western supplies of long-range missiles “to significantly limit the key tool of the Russian military” by destroying warehouses where the country keeps its weapons. cannons used in the front line.
