Russia has initiative in east but aid is on the way

POKROVSK, UKRAINE Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday his country’s army is facing “a really difficult situation” in eastern regions where troops are battling to hold at bay an intense Russian push along parts of the front line.

Russia has sought to exploit Ukraine’s shortages of ammunition and manpower as the flow of Western supplies since the outbreak of the war petered out, assembling large troop concentrations in the east as well as in the north and gaining an edge on the battlefield, Zelenskyy said.

But a massive new U.S. military aid package is coming, and it will turn the tide, he said at a news conference in Kyiv with visiting President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola.

“With an increase in the supply of weapons, we will be able to stop them in the east. As of now, they seized the initiative there,” Zelenskyy said.

Russia is pressing hard in parts of eastern Ukraine in an effort to drive deeper into the Donetsk region, which it partly occupies.

The Ukrainian army is on the back foot, scrambling to build fortified defensive lines, and engaged in intense combat.

Ukraine’s forces are outnumbered in infantry, armour and ammunition against Russia’s bigger army and are trying to limit the Kremlin’s forces to incremental gains.

A Ukrainian brigade recently deployed near Pokrovsk, a town of around 60,000 people before the war, to help stop the creeping Russian advance.

Soldiers said the Russians usually shelled Ukrainian positions around dawn before sending in waves of small infantry units. The attackers seek to gain footholds and quickly dig in to consolidate their limited advance.

The Russian goal, according to Ukrainian intelligence, is to secure the battered small town of Ocheretyne and reach the main Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka road, severing a key Ukrainian line of communication with other front-line towns.