War in Ukraine, Day 112 | Ukraine hopes for a decision from its allies to speed up arms deliveries

(Lyssytchansk) Ukraine, struggling against Russian forces in the Donbass, hopes that its Western allies, who are meeting in Brussels on Wednesday around US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, will decide to speed up their deliveries of heavy weapons .

“Brussels, we are waiting for a decision,” tweeted Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency. “The Russia/Ukraine artillery ratio is around 10 to 1 in some areas, I get daily messages from our fighters saying ‘We are holding on, just tell us when the weapons will arrive’,” he said. added, a few hours before the opening of the meeting of the allies.

This new Ukrainian appeal comes as Russian and pro-Russian separatist forces continue their assault on the city of Sievierodonetsk and its neighbor Lyssychansk. The two cities are key to taking the entire Donbass basin in eastern Ukraine, which pro-Russian forces have already controlled part of since 2014.

“We have to hold on,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told 111 on Tuesday evening.^e day of the Russian invasion launched on February 24. “It is vital to stay in the Donbass […]the defense of the region is essential to give an indication of who will dominate in the coming weeks,” he added in his daily video message.

For weeks, the Ukrainians have been asking for heavy weapons in quantity. If Washington and London have promised multiple rocket launcher systems with a range slightly greater than equivalent Russian weapons, they seem to be coming only in dribs and drabs.

” We [n’avons] received [qu’]about 10%” of the weapons that Ukraine needs, without which “we will not be able to win this war”, lamented Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Maliar.

“Yes, Ukraine should have more heavy weapons,” assured NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday evening.

NATO has already started “scaling up” its arms deliveries to Kyiv, he added, noting that the Ukrainians “absolutely depend on (these deliveries) to deal with Russia’s brutal aggression”.

Deliveries that the Russian army tries to intercept. She said on Wednesday that she destroyed with Kalibr missiles a warehouse of weapons supplied by NATO, including M777 155 mm howitzers, near Lviv, in western Ukraine.

Non-stop bombings

The Ukrainian authorities have admitted in recent days that their troops have been driven out of the city center of Sievierodonetsk, and only have “complicated communication channels” with them following the destruction of all the bridges to Lysychansk.

The Ukrainian forces are notably entrenched in the Azot chemical plant, emblematic of this city of 100,000 inhabitants, with more than 500 civilians inside, according to the mayor of Sievierodonetsk Oleksandre Striouk.

Moscow proposed on Tuesday a “humanitarian corridor” that would allow the evacuation of these civilians to territories controlled by the Russians, but Kyiv did not confirm it. A pro-Russian separatist official on Wednesday morning accused the Ukrainians of having prevented its establishment.

A situation reminiscent of that of the huge Azovstal steelworks, which for weeks was the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the port of Mariupol, on the Sea of ​​Azov, with hundreds of civilians taking refuge with them and rare coordinated operations of evacuation.

The Ukrainian presidency confirmed on Wednesday that the Russian assault on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk was continuing, without mentioning any advances by one side or the other. Kyiv has so far denied any encirclement of its forces, while pro-Russian separatist forces have called on them to “surrender or die”.

According to an AFP journalist on the spot, the roads linking Lysytchansk to Kramatorsk, another key city in Donbass under Ukrainian control, are used to transport weapons, including Grad multiple rocket launchers and artillery guns, while special vehicles transport tanks that need to be repaired.

Like Sievierodonetsk, Lyssytchansk is now practically deserted, with severed electric cables, charred stores.

“The Russians are bombing the city center all the time,” a local policeman told AFP. “It’s 24 hours a day, ‘non stop'”, adds his colleague.

Next decision of the European Union

While Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO seem more remote than ever, Kyiv awaits a European Union decision by June 24 on its request to be accepted as an official candidate for membership in the bloc. European-beginning of a process of negotiations which can take years.

In this context, French President Emmanuel Macron, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU until June 30, as well as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi are expected in Kyiv on Thursday, according to German media and Italians.

Such a visit would be a first since the start of the Russian invasion for the leaders of the three largest European economies.

Without confirming this trip, the French president on Wednesday sent encouraging signals to Kyiv, visiting a NATO base in Romania.

“I think we are at a time when we, the European Union, need to send clear political signals to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in a context where they have been resisting heroically for several months” , said Mr. Macron, stressing however that “new in-depth discussions” were necessary with Ukraine.