Prez: Ukraine faces ‘extremely difficult’ frontline battles

KYIV: Ukrainian troops, reeling from the loss of a key town, now face “extremely difficult” conditions all along the frontline with Russia because of delayed foreign aid, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

A heightened Russian offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine saw them capture the key town of Avdiivka last week in a major boost ahead of the second anniversary of the February 2022 invasion.

The Ukrainian military also says it is critically short of ammunition and shells, worsened by the holdup of a $60 billion US aid package.

“The situation is extremely difficult in several parts of the frontline, where Russian troops have concentrated maximum reserves,” Zelensky said on Monday after visiting frontline troops in the Kharkiv region.

Russian troops “are taking advantage of the delays in helping Ukraine,” Zelensky added, highlighting shortages of artillery, frontline air defence and longer-range weapons.

US President Joe Biden told Zelensky on Sunday that he was “confident” the Republicandominated US Congress would approve the critically needed aid.

Slain defector was ‘moral corpse’: Russia’s spy chief

Russia’s spy boss on Tuesday said a pilot who defected to Ukraine with a military helicopter and then reportedly shot dead in Spain was a “moral corpse”.

Maxim Kuzminov flew his Mi-8 helicopter into Ukraine in August in a brazen operation, saying he opposed Russia’s military offensive.

Reports in Spanish media said Kuzminov was found shot dead in the southern town of Villajoyosa last week, where he had moved after receiving Ukrainian citizenship for switching sides.

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate later confirmed that Kuzminov had died without providing further details, Ukrainian media reported.

“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Russian state news agencies quoted Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, as saying on Tuesday.

REUTERS Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena attend a commemoration ceremony at a monument to the so-called ‘Heavenly Hundred’, the people killed during the Ukrainian pro-European Union (EU) mass demonstrations in 2014, in Kyiv, on Tuesday.