Ukraine war could last for years: Nato
The industrial city of Severodonetsk in the east is facing full scale heavy artillery and rocket fire from Russian forces
KYIV: The war in Ukraine could last for years, the head of Nato said on Sunday, as Russia stepped up its assaults after the European Union recommended that Kyiv become a candidate to join the bloc.
Jens Stoltenberg said supplying stateof-the-art weaponry to Ukrainian troops would boost the chance of freeing its eastern region of Donbas from Russian control, Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported.
“We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine,” Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of the military alliance, was quoted as saying.
“Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited Kyiv on Friday, also spoke of a need to prepare for a long war.
This meant ensuring “Ukraine receives weapons, equipment, ammunition and training more rapidly than the invader,” Johnson wrote in an opinion piece in London’s Sunday Times.
“Time is the vital factor,” he wrote. “Everything will depend on whether Ukraine can strengthen its ability to defend its soil faster than Russia can renew its capacity to attack.” Ukraine received a significant boost on Friday when the European Commission recommended it for candidate status, a decision EU nations are expected to endorse at a summit this week.
That would put Ukraine on course to realise an aspiration seen as out of reach before Russia’s February 24 invasion, even if membership could take years.
Severodonetsk: Russia intensifies attacks
Russian attacks intensified on Ukraine’s battlefields.
The industrial city of Severodonetsk, a prime target in Moscow’s offensive to seize full control of Luhansk - one of the two provinces making up the Donbas - faced heavy artillery and rocket fire again, the Ukrainian military said. “Russian forces will likely be able to seize Sevierodonetsk in the coming weeks, but at the cost of concentrating most of their available forces in this small area,” analysts at a Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, wrote in a note.
Serhiy Gaidai, the Ukraini-anappointed governor of Luhansk, told Ukrainian television: “All Russian claims that they control the town are a lie. They control the main part of the town, but not the whole town.”
In the twin city of Lysychansk across the river, Gaidai said on the Telegram messaging app, residential buildings and private houses had been destroyed, adding, “People are dying on the streets and in bomb shelters.”
A fuel storage depot in the eastern town of Novomoskovsk exploded on Sunday, killing one person and injuring two, after it had been hit by three Russian missiles, the regional administration chief said in an online message.
Also, two top commanders of fighters who defended the Azovstal steel plant in the southeastern port of Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for investigation, Russia’s state news agency TASS said.
Eastern attack is going well, claims Russia
Russia said on Sunday that its offensive against Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine was proceeding successfully after it took control of a district in the outskirts of the city.
“The offensive in the Severodonetsk direction is developing successfully,” Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a video statement. He said the settlement of Metyolkine, on the eastern outskirts of the city, had been taken.
“The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue to strike military targets on the territory of Ukraine,” he said.
Konashenkov said long-range Kalibr cruise missiles struck a command centre in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing Ukrainian generals and officers, including from the general staff.
Russia also said it had destroyed 10 155-mm M777 howitzers and up to 20 military vehicles in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv that had been supplied by Western countries over the past 10 days.
Iskander missiles struck a Kharkiv tank repair plant in Ukraine, destroying two multiple rocket launch systems, Konashenkov said.
Russian troops head towards Kharkiv?
The situation north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is quite difficult as Russian forces have been trying to get closer to shell the city again, an official at Ukraine’s interior ministry said on Sunday.
“Russia is trying to make Kharkiv a frontline city,” Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to the interior minister, told Ukraine’s national television.