Ukraine’s bloody stalemate
Russia launched its first air strikes on Kyiv in over a month, while heavy fighting continued in eastern Ukraine this week. The strikes on sites in Ukraine’s capital followed warnings from Moscow that it would step up attacks in retaliation for the supply of new US weapons to Ukraine. Kyiv said its forces had recaptured a fifth of Severodonetsk, a Russian-occupied city in the eastern Luhansk province. After a visit to the front line, Ukraine’s President Zelensky warned that his forces were outnumbered in Severodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, but said they had “every chance” of fighting back. Russia will control the whole of Luhansk if it takes the cities.
The US announced that it would send a new rocket system, doubling Ukraine’s artillery range; the UK will send similar weapons. In remarks which angered Kyiv, France’s President Macron urged the West not to “humiliate” Russia, so that a diplomatic solution can be found “when the fighting stops”.
What the editorials said
What on earth is Macron thinking, asked The Times. Russian forces are launching “relentless attacks” on Severodonetsk and are killing up to 100 Ukrainian troops a day. Yet instead of focusing on getting weapons to Ukraine, the French president has made an “extraordinarily foolish” intervention in which he talked of finding an accommodation with Moscow. And he isn’t the only EU leader to suggest that Russia be offered a face-saving way out of the war: Germany’s Olaf Scholz has done so too, and recently repeatedly refused to say that he wants to see Russia defeated militarily.
Signs of “flagging resolve” in Western capitals are clearly alarming, said The Washington Post – not least because Russian forces seem to have “regrouped” in recent weeks. Yet for all the talk of “intra-European squabbling”, said The Economist, the overall story of this conflict is one of impressive continental unity: witness the EU’s announcement of stiffer sanctions on Russia last week. However, that unity will no doubt be “further tested” in the months ahead – especially by the question of how to wean the continent off Russian gas.