Bloody waiting game for Kyiv

As many as 200 Ukrainian soldiers are dying each day in the fighting across southern and eastern Ukraine, a senior Kyiv official said Thursday in a plea for more weapon shipments from the West.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC this week that 100 to 200 troops were dying each day due to what he called a “complete lack of parity” between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

Russia has “thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front,” he said. “Our demands for artillery are not just some kind of whim . . . but an objective need when it comes to the situation on the battlefield.

“There’s something really important our partners need to understand, and that’s until Russia suffers a serious military defeat, no form of dialogue will be possible, and they will continue to be able to try and take parts of our country,” Podolyak added.

The adviser’s call for arms echoed one heard Thursday by a Ukrainian commander on the ground in Severodonetsk, where a bloody backand-forth has played out in recent days for control of the small industrial city.

Petro Kusyk, a Ukrainian national guard commander, said Thursday that his forces were suffering a “catastrophic” lack of long-range artillery, keeping them from responding to Russian bombardment.

Long-range precision rockets are due to arrive in Ukraine from the US and UK within weeks, but it remains to be seen if Ukrainian forces can hold on to the eastern Donbas region for that long.

Kyiv has estimated that over 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in fighting so far.