On Friday, Ukrainian officials pleaded for more Western assistance, including faster deliveries of artillery and battlefield rocket systems, to fend off Russian forces in the east.
Heavy fighting was still reported in Sievierodonetsk, the small eastern city that has become the focal point of Russia’s advance and the site of one of the bloodiest battles in a war that has increased financial and physical hardship worldwide.
Chronic hunger could affect up to 19 million more people globally in the coming year as a result of reduced wheat and other food commodity exports from Ukraine and Russia, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Within Ukraine, officials expressed concern about the spread of deadly cholera and dysentery in Mariupol, where tens of thousands of civilians live in ruins liberated last month after a Russian siege.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleaded for his country to be accepted as a member of the West, with binding guarantees for its protection, in a speech delivered via video link to a democracy conference in Copenhagen.
‘The European Union can take a historic step that will demonstrate that words about the people of Ukraine belonging to the European family are not just words, and thus are not empty,’ he said, urging the EU to accept Ukraine’s request to be admitted as a candidate for membership.
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