Ukraine war could last years, says Nato head

Jens Stoltenberg warns against expecting a quick victory as Russia seeks to bring frontline to Kharkiv

‘We must not let up in supporting Ukraine. Even if costs are high, not only for military support, but also rising energy costs’

‘The Russians are trying to get close to [Kharkiv] as much as they could to be able to shell the city’

THE head of Nato warned yesterday that the world must be prepared for the war in Ukraine to last “years” as Russia sought to bring the frontline to the country’s second city.

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, reiterated the pledge to supply Ukraine with advanced weaponry to help ward off attacks, but warned against expecting a quick victory.

“We must prepare for the fact that it could take years,” he said in an interview with Germany’s Bild am Sonntag.

“We must not let up in supporting Ukraine. Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices.”

In Ukraine, an interior ministry official yesterday warned that Russian forces were trying to approach Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, to “turn it into a new frontline town”.

“The Russians are trying to get close to [Kharkiv] as much as they could to be able to shell the city,” Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said.

Kharkiv faced heavy shelling in the first two months of the war as Russian forces advanced to its suburbs. But they have since retreated, and moderate Ukrainian gains allowed them to push the Russians out of artillery range from Kharkiv.

The city, close to the Russian border, came under attack yesterday, with Russia’s defence ministry claiming to have fired Iskander ballistic missiles which destroyed Western weapons supplies recently brought to the city.

Near Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro, a Russian missile hit a fuel depot, causing a fire that killed two people and injured more than a dozen, according to the Dnipro governor. The fire raged throughout yesterday after the nighttime attack.

In the country’s east, fighting has recently focused on the city of Severodonetsk, which has been pummelled almost as hard as Mariupol by Russian artillery.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, DC, in their daily report said late on Saturday a Russian offensive outside Severodonetsk has largely stalled, but the town is still bound to fall as Ukraine is massively outgunned by Russian artillery.

“Russian forces will likely be able to seize Severodonetsk in the coming weeks,” it said, adding that Russia had concentrated “most of its available forces in this small area”.

In Severodonetsk’s twin city of Lysychansk, just across the river, the bodies of two civilians who were killed by Russian shelling had been found, local governor Serhiy Gaiday said.

Meanwhile, more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered Mariupol’s last pocket of resistance at the Azovstal steel plant last month remain in Russian captivity even though the Ukrainian government insisted a swap deal was pending.

An unnamed Russian official yesterday told the Russian Tass news agency that several prominent commanders of the Azov battalion, including Denys Prokopenko, have been removed from the separatist-held east and taken to Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, where they are likely to face gruelling interrogations.

Lefortovo is informally run by the FSB intelligence agency, and inmates there often face inhumane treatment and psychological pressure.