As Ukraine’s military fought a grinding Russian attack that was closing in on seizing a key city in the east, Western nations offered more and more advanced armaments to strengthen the country’s defense.
Germany announced on Wednesday that it will provide Ukraine with contemporary anti-aircraft missiles and radar systems, while the United States will present a new weapons package later in the day that will include high-tech medium-range rocket systems.
The United States is “pouring fuel on the flames,” according to a Kremlin spokeswoman.
Ukraine’s success in stymieing Russia’s far larger and better-equipped military — thwarting Moscow’s first attempts to capture the capital and forcing Moscow to divert its emphasis to the eastern industrial Donbas area — has been mostly due to Western armaments.
However, as the war drags on and Russia continues to bombard towns in the east, Ukraine has appealed for more and better armaments. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has occasionally chastised the West for moving too slowly in shipping weaponry, and military analysts have speculated that Russia is attempting to overrun the Donbas before any weapons that could alter the tide reach.
Germany has been under particular scrutiny for not doing more, both at home and from friends abroad.
The surface-to-air IRIS-T SLM missiles that Germany will send are the country’s most sophisticated air defense system, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. They have a longer range than the anti-aircraft vehicles it previously provided during the Cold War.
“We will be able to protect an entire city from Russian air raids with this,” he claimed. Germany is providing radar devices to Ukraine to aid in the detection of hostile weaponry.
Germany and the United States, according to Scholz, are coordinating their actions.
According to two senior administration officials, the US package will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank missile systems, tactical vehicles, replacement parts, and more, in addition to the rocket systems it has offered. Officials talked on the condition of anonymity in order to give a sneak peek at the package before it is properly announced.
According to one official, the upgraded rocket weapons will allow Ukrainian forces to strike Russian assets within Ukraine with better precision.
Moscow sees the US plans to send more weaponry as “bad,” according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who added that the Kremlin does not believe Kyiv’s promises that the missile systems will not be used to target Russia.
“We believe the US is putting fuel on the fire deliberately and diligently,” Peskov added.
The announcements come as a regional governor claimed that Russian forces now control 70% of Sievierodonetsk, a key city in Moscow’s efforts to complete their takeover of the Donbas, where Ukrainian and Russian-backed separatists have fought for years and where the separatists already control large swaths of territory.
Some Ukrainian military have withdrawn from Luhansk, according to a post on the Telegram messaging app by Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai, however, he subsequently informed reporters that the troops who remained were fighting in the streets.
Lysychansk, the only other city in Luhansk not yet overrun by the Russians, is still “completely” under Ukrainian control, he claimed, but it will likely be next.
“If the Russians are able to fully capture Sievierodonetsk within two to three days, they will begin deploying artillery and mortars and intensify their shelling on Lysychansk,” Haidai added.
Meanwhile, Zelensky said the country is losing 60 to 100 soldiers per day in combat, with another 500 injured.
On Tuesday night, he told the American news station Newsmax that “the most severe situation is in the east of Ukraine and southern Donetsk and Luhansk,” two of the Donbas’ areas.
A regional governor in southern Ukraine sounded a more upbeat tone, claiming that Russian forces are retreating and burning up bridges to block a prospective Ukrainian offensive. On Wednesday Vitaliy Kim the governor of the Mykolayiv area stated in Telegram messages that Russia was on the defense.
“They are frightened of a Ukrainian army counterattack,” Kim stated. He didn’t say where the retreat will take place. Russian forces have just taken control of areas of the Mykolayiv region, which are near the huge Russian-controlled city of Kherson.
In his nightly address, Zelensky stated that Ukraine had achieved “some success in the Kherson direction.”
