Ukrainian forces battled Friday to repel waves of Russian soldiers trying to break through their defense lines in the east, as they pleaded for more weapons before the first Western battle tanks arrive.
Ukrainian officials confirmed that brutal battles were underway, a day after at least 11 people were killed and as many people were injured in missile and armed-drone strikes across the country, including in the capital of Kyiv, which were widely viewed as retaliatory after the US and European countries pledged to send modern tanks.
“Fierce fighting continues along the front lines,” said Oleh Synehubov, governor of the northeastern region of Kharkiv, adding that Ukrainian forces were holding out.
Front lines have been largely frozen for two months, with Russia struggling to gain ground in the east after occupying swathes of territory there and protecting a corridor of land it has seized in southern Ukraine.
Oleskandr Musiyenko, head of the Military and Strategic Research Centre of Ukraine, said Russia was sending in more reinforcements, mainly conscripts, to block Ukrainian advances.
“But they do not have the level of artillery and tank support they had on Feb. 24,” Musiyenko told Ukrainian television.
Britain said in an intelligence update that Russia Moscow’s forces had probably conducted probing attacks near Orikhiv in southeastern Ukraine and in Vuhledar in the east, but were unlikely to have achieved “substantive advances.”
In a new interview with Sky News, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Russia was beefing up its forces and gearing up for new attacks. He claimed that the enemy has been losing “an extraordinary number of people,” who he said were being left behind on battlefields and not counted by their commanders.
Zelensky thanked allies for their support but renewed calls for tougher sanctions on Moscow and more weapons in the twelfth month of the war.
“This evil, this Russian aggression can and should be stopped only with adequate weapons. The terrorist state will not understand anything else,” Zelensky said in his nightly television address Thursday.
His comments came after President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced they would send Ukraine dozens of Abrams and Leopard 2 battle tanks, respectively, after weeks of tough negotiations.
Poland gave Ukraine a further boost Friday by pledging an additional 60 tanks on top of 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it had already pledged.
Both sides in the war are widely expected to launch spring offensives though Washington has advised Ukraine against doing so until the latest weapons are in place and training has been provided – a process expected to take several months.
In his Sky News sit-down, Zelensky said he did not know when the first Western tanks would arrive in Ukraine, saying that any delay in their delivery would be a “big problem.”
Russia said the US was “pumping weapons into Ukraine,” which Moscow has accused of doing Washington’s bidding. The Kremlin scolded Biden, saying he held the key to ending the conflict but had not used it.
With Post wires
