Ukraine pleaded with Western countries for faster weapon deliveries as better-armed Russian forces pounded the country’s east, as well as humanitarian assistance to combat growing outbreaks of deadly diseases.
Further heavy fighting was reported in Sievierodonetsk, the small city that has become the focal point of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war that is now in its fourth month.
According to Ukrainian officials, the war in the east, where Russia is focusing its attention, is now primarily an artillery battle in which Kyiv is severely outgunned. That means that only if Washington and others keep their promises to send more and better weaponry, including rocket systems, will the tide turn.
‘This is now an artillery war,’ Ukraine’s deputy chief of military intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
‘Everything now depends on what we receive. Ukraine has one artillery piece for every ten to fifteen Russian artillery pieces.’
Germany, which has been one of the largest suppliers of weapons since Russia’s invasion but has been chastised for being slow to supply the heavy weaponry Kyiv claims it requires, plans to revise its arms export rules to make it easier to arm democracies like Ukraine, Spiegel reported on Friday.
To the south, the mayor of Mariupol, which has been reduced to ruins as a result of a Russian siege, said sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.
‘There is a dysentery and cholera outbreak,’ Boichenko said on national television. ‘War took over 20,000 residents… unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, thousands more Mariupolites will be claimed,’ he said, adding that some wells had been contaminated by corpses.
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