Despite securing pledges for dozens of modern battle tanks from the United States and the other Western allies in the course of last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky made renewed pleas for Western jets and long-range missile systems, stressing in his nightly video address on Sunday the urgency of that plea.
Despite Zelensky’s demands, the Biden administration has so far declined to supply Ukraine with the US-made ATACMS missile with a range of about 300 km.
Zelensky said that Ukraine needs the new weapons and faster deliveries to confront a very tough situation in which Russian forces are constantly attacking the eastern Donetsk region – especially the sectors of Bakhmut and Vuhledar- noting the need for speeding up events and supplies to confront that situation and open up new weapons options for Ukraine.
He underscored that as Moscow seeks to drag the war on and exhaust Kyiv’s forces, there are constant attempts to break through Ukrainian defenses.
At the same time, the Ukrainian soldiers seemed unperturbed on Sunday by the Russian armed forces’ announcement of its plans to launch a new offensive in the region of Zaporizhzhia.
Kyiv troops are confident that Russian troops don’t send infantry over the line of fights because they’re scared despite the increased activity in these past couple of weeks with shelling from artillery and even from tanks.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces even claimed that its troops repelled the attack near the village of Blahodatne, in the eastern part of the Donetsk region, but Russia’s Wagner private military group said it took control of the village and a later military statement made no mention of Blahodatne.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said that at least three people were wounded on Sunday in the urban district of Kyivskyi in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, as a Soviet-era S-300 long-range missile hit a residential building there causing a fire and heavy damage in the building.
The northeastern city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said on Telegram that all emergency services are on-site and rescue operations were ongoing.
Zelensky’s latest appeal for increased weapons shipments was kind of surprising considering that it few days after the US and Germany – along with a few more countries- agreed to send Kyiv modern tanks.
Without specifying which countries would provide the tanks or providing a breakdown of which models, Kyiv’s ambassador to France Vadym Omelchenko said that Western countries will deliver more than 300 tanks to Ukraine.
Previously this week, Berlin finally agreed to send Kyiv 14 Leopard 2 A6s while Washington pledged to provide 31 M1 Abrams tanks on top of the 14 Challenger 2 tanks that the UK has previously promised.
Poland, at the same time, is still waiting for Berlin’s approval to transfer Kyiv some of its own German-made Leopard 2s.
