Warring sides considering their next moves
Russian shelling kills 5 civilians in Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — Fighting remained largely deadlocked Monday in eastern Ukraine where Russian shelling killed five civilians over the past day, according to Ukrainian officials, as the warring sides sized up their needs for renewed military pushes expected in coming weeks.
The casualties included a woman who was killed and three others who were wounded by the Russian shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the country’s northeast, regional Gov. Oleh Syniyehubov said Monday.
Russia’s troops seized large areas of the northeastern Kharkiv region in the months following its invasion of its neighbor last February. But Ukrainian counteroffensives that began in August snatched back Russian-occupied territory, notably in Kharkiv.
Those successes lent weight to Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging defeats to Russia if its Western allies provided more weaponry.
Kyiv last week won promises of tanks from the United States and Germany.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Monday hinted at the prospect of more upcoming pledges, saying that “any activity aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s defense powers is under consultation with our NATO partners.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said keeping up the pace of allies’ support is crucial.
“The speed of supply has been, and will be, one of the key factors in this war. Russia hopes to drag out the war … so we have to make time our weapon,” he said Sunday in his nightly video address.
With the war approaching its one-year mark and draining both sides’ resources, the Western call for weapons for Kyiv is spreading beyond NATO.
The alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, on Monday called for South Korea to send direct military support to Ukraine, too. South Korea is a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped, U.s.-backed military.
France and Australia announced Monday plans to jointly produce and send several thousand 155-millimeter artillery shells to Ukraine. The first deliveries are expected in the first quarter of this year.
Zelenskyy, in a news conference Monday in Odesa, said Russian forces seem to be trying to take revenge on Ukraine because of battlefield successes, “to provide their society with some convincing positive result in the offensive.”
He pledged to “stop them all little by little, defeat them and prepare our big counteroffensive.”