West vows more arms, sanctions over new Russian offensive
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Western allies on Tuesday pledged more military supplies and sanctions to assist Ukraine as its troops battle against Russian forces intensifying their offensive in the east of the country.
Ukraine's armed forces said fighting had increased throughout Donbas, and the ministry of defence reported heavy clashes including near the town of Marinka in the Donetsk region.
Responding to the new Russian push, the United States and European Union agreed to increase "Moscow's international isolation", during a virtual meeting between US President Joe Biden and European leaders on Tuesday.
"We will further tighten our sanctions against Russia and step up financial and security assistance for Ukraine," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter.
Russia's defence ministry said that "high-precision air-based missiles" had hit 13 Ukrainian positions in parts of Donbas while other air strikes "hit 60 military assets", including in towns close to the eastern frontline.
Biden suggested Tuesday to reporters that the United States would send more artillery -- as the latest $800 million US aid package starts to arrive in Ukraine, including 18 howitzers, 40,000 artillery rounds, 200 armored personnel carriers and 11 helicopters.
"We will continue to provide them more ammunition as we will provide them more military assistance," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in response to fears that Ukraine was running low.
More aircraft
The Pentagon said Tuesday that Ukraine had also recently received fighter planes and aircraft parts to bolster its air force, declining to specify the number of aircraft and their origin.
Ukrainian forces "have available to them more fixed-wing fighter aircraft than they did two weeks ago," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Kyiv has asked its Western partners to provide MiG-29s that its pilots already know how to fly, and which a handful of Eastern European countries have.
On Tuesday evening, the Ukrainian defence ministry reported its troops had beaten back a Russian attack in the city of Izium, south of the partly blockaded second city of Kharkiv.
It also claimed enemy losses in a Ukrainian counter-attack near the town of Marinka in Donetsk.
In the eastern town of Novodruzhesk, resident Nadya, 65, said "we are bombed everywhere".
"It's a miracle that we're still alive," she said, her voice trembling. "We were lying on the ground and waiting. Since February 24 we've been sleeping in the cellar."
Control of Donbas and the besieged southern port of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the Crimean peninsula that it annexed in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of much of its coastline and a major revenue resource.
In its relentless battle to capture Mariupol, Moscow issued a fresh call for the city's defenders to surrender and announced the opening of a humanitarian corridor for any Ukrainian troops who agreed to lay down their arms.
But during an interview broadcast on CNN Tuesday, Pavlo Kyrylenko — who oversees the Donetsk region's military administration — said Mariupol remained contested.
"The Ukrainian flag is flying over the city," he said.
Heavy fighting
President Vladimir Putin has said he launched the so-called military operation in Ukraine in February to save Russian speakers in the country from a "genocide" carried out by a "neo-Nazi" regime.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Moscow's new advance on the east after failing to take the capital Kyiv "underscored the critical need for further military support," his spokesperson said.
The regional governor of the eastern Lugansk region Sergiy Gaiday said Ukrainian forces continued to hold their ground amid heavy fighting.
"We have positional battles in the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna. The enemy cannot do anything though. They are losing people and equipment there," Gaiday said.
"Our guys are shooting down drones there. Shooting down planes on the border of the Lugansk and Kharkiv regions, so they are holding on," he added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced Russia's ongoing offensive as he issued calls for a four-day truce to mark Orthodox Holy Week.
"Instead of a celebration of new life, this Easter coincides with a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine," Guterres told reporters.
"The intense concentration of forces and firepower makes this battle inevitably more violent, bloody and destructive," he said, calling for a "humanitarian pause" from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday on April 24.
As fighting raged, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a grim forecast for the warring nations, while also predicting the conflict would drag down the global economy — hitting poorest nations the hardest.
The report predicted Ukraine would suffer a 35 percent collapse of its economy this year, while Russia's GDP would drop 8.5 percent — more than 11 points below the pre-war expectations.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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