Kyiv: Officials from Ukraine called in for help from the West on Friday, incorporating steadier and quicker deliveries of artillery and battlefield rocket systems that would help hold off Russian forces at a critical point in the battlefield in the east.
The small eastern city experienced one of the bloodiest scenes on the battleground of war.
The heavy fighting reported in Sievierodonetsk became the focus of Russia’s advance which has only increased financial and physical hardships around the globe.
On top of this, the United Nations’s food agency reported Chronic hunger could afflict up to 19 million more people worldwide over the next course of the year due to reduced exports of wheat and other commodities from Ukraine and Russia.
Ukraine officials said they were worried about the rapid spread of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery in the southern city of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of civilians were recorded living in the ruins captured last month after being pulverized by the Russian siege.
In a speech via video-link to a democracy conference in Copenhagen, Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was seen pleading for his country to be a packed part of the West that would bind them with guarantees for its protection.
Calling out to the EU to accept Ukraine’s request to be given the space to be a member candidate, he said, “The European Union can take a historic step that will prove that words about the people of Ukraine belonging to the European family are not just words, and therefore are not empty.”
Ukrainian officials report that the war in the east has turned into more of an artillery battle wherein they are heavily outgunned by Moscow.
This could be turned only if the West fulfills their promise to send in more and better-polished artillery that includes the rocket systems Washington and others for which they have already given their word.
Deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence Vadym Skibitsky says, “This is an artillery war now”, in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Further along, he adds, “Everything now depends on what the west provides us with”, “Ukraine has with themselves one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces.
About 10% of this has been given to us by our Western partners.
Hoping to capture the full territory of eastern Luhansk province, Russia has concentrated its forces into a full battle zone for the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk.
This demands that Ukraine cede to separatists tagging with their neighboring Donetsk province.
There have been reports about Russian troops forcing their way into the north and south surrounding areas in a way to encircle the Ukrainians.
But so far this plan has made very limited progress. Defense from Ukraine’s ministry department said the Russians were still trying to test the defenses of Ukraine along the river.
The Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol who has been operating outside the boundaries of the southern port now which is entirely run and manipulated by Russians after a three-month siege commented how thousands more could die from cholera due to the ongoing conditions.
“Dysentery and cholera outbreak has been on its surge.
This is unfortunately the analysis our doctors gave out. The war which took out over 20,000 residents, sadly with such infections righting and breaking its barriers, will no doubt claim thousands more Mariupolites.” – stated the Mayor.
