EU defense chiefs to meet to discuss arming Ukraine
Kyiv, Ukraine --EU defense ministers were preparing to meet Wednesday to discuss a plan to rush one billion euros of ammunition to Ukraine as pressure mounts on Kyiv's allies to boost supplies to its war effort.
Ukraine's critical shortage of ammunition will top the agenda at the meeting in Stockholm, where European leaders will try to replenish the thousands of 155-millimetre howitzer shells Kyiv's forces are firing each day in its fight against a grinding Russian offensive.
Fighting is raging around Ukraine's eastern town of Bakhmut, with President Volodymyr Zelensky warning that if the town fell, Moscow would gain an "open road" for offensives deeper into his country.
"We understand that after Bakhmut, they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be an open road for the Russians
after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction," Zelensky told CNN in an interview due to be broadcast in the United States on Wednesday.
During a visit to Canada, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday underscored European resolve to ward off Russian aggression.
"We will never accept that a military power with fantasies of empire rolls its tanks across an international border," von der Leyen said in an address to Canada's parliament.
But a report released Tuesday in the New York Times, which claimed that US officials had seen new intelligence indicating a "pro-Ukrainian group" was behind last year's sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, could raise difficult questions among the allies.
Senior Ukrainian official Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed the report, saying the country "had nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap".
Battle for Bakhmut The Russian army vowed Tuesday to capture Bakhmut -- a salt-mining town with a pre-war population of 80,000.
The intense fighting around the town has been the longest and bloodiest in Russia's more than year-long invasion, which has devastated swathes of Ukraine and displaced millions.
Ukraine said it had identified a soldier who had gone missing in the area being shot dead in a video that sparked outrage on social media and as UN chief Antonio Guterres headed to Kyiv for talks.
The footage shows what appears to be a detained Ukrainian combatant standing in a shallow trench, smoking, and being shot after saying "Glory to Ukraine".
Russia has appeared intent on capturing the town at all costs.