The war in Ukraine could last for years, the NATO chief said on Sunday, as Russia intensified its attacks after the European Union recommended that Kyiv become a candidate to join the bloc.
Jens Stoltenberg said the supply of state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukrainian troops would increase the possibility of liberating the eastern Donbas region from Russian control, the German daily Bild am Sonntag reported.
“We have to prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not stop supporting Ukraine,” said Stoltenberg, secretary general of the military alliance.
“Even if the costs are high, not only because of military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited Kyiv on Friday, also spoke of the need to prepare for a protracted war.
This meant ensuring that “Ukraine receives arms, equipment, ammunition and training more quickly than the invader,” Johnson wrote in an op-ed in London’s Sunday Times.
“Time is the vital factor,” he wrote. “It will all depend on whether Ukraine can build up its ability to defend its soil faster than Russia can renew its ability to strike.”
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Ukraine received a significant boost on Friday when the European Commission recommended it for candidate status, a decision EU nations are expected to endorse at a summit this week.
That would put Ukraine on the path to realizing an aspiration that was considered out of reach before Russia’s invasion on February 24, even if membership could take years.
Russian attacks intensified on the battlefields of Ukraine. The industrial city of Severodonetsk, a main target in Moscow’s offensive to take full control of Luhansk, one of the two provinces that make up Donbas, again faced heavy artillery and rocket fire, the Ukrainian military said.
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“The situation in Severodonetsk is very difficult,” said Serhiy Gaidai, the Ukrainian-appointed governor of Luhansk, adding that Russian forces, using drones for aerial reconnaissance, were adjusting attacks quickly in response to defense changes.
“The areas near the bridges have been heavily shelled again,” Gaidai said in an online post on Sunday, adding that the Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of people had taken refuge, was hit twice.
“The struggle continues for full control of the city,” the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in a daily update on Sunday.
Analysts at the Washington Institute for the Study of War think tank wrote that “Russian forces will likely be able to seize Severodonetsk in the coming weeks, but at the cost of concentrating most of their available forces in this small area.”
Ukraine’s military acknowledged that “the enemy has been partially successful in the village of Metolkine,” just southeast of Severodonetsk.
Russian state news agency Tass said many Ukrainian fighters had surrendered in Metolkine, citing a source working for the Russian-backed separatists.
Russian missiles hit a gas plant in the northwestern Izyum district, and Russian rockets raining down on a suburb of Kharkiv, the second-largest city, hit a municipal building and caused a fire, but there were no casualties, police said. Ukrainian authorities.
Two senior fighter commanders who defended the Azovstal steel plant in the southeastern port of Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for investigation, TASS said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had visited soldiers on the southern front line in the Mykolaiv region, some 550 kilometers (340 miles) south of Kyiv.
“I spoke to our defenders: the army, the police, the National Guard,” he said Sunday in a video on the Telegram messaging app that appeared to have been recorded on a moving train.
“Their mood is assured: everyone does not doubt our victory,” Zelenskiy said. “We will not give the south to anyone, and everything that is ours we will take back.”
Another video showed Zelenskiy in his signature khaki T-shirt handing out medals and posing for selfies with servicemen.
Zelenskiy has mostly stayed in Kyiv since Russia invaded, though in recent weeks he has made unannounced visits to Kharkiv and two eastern cities near the battles.
One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated goals in sending troops to Ukraine was to stop the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance’s eastward expansion and keep Moscow’s southern neighbor out of the West’s sphere of influence.
But the war, which killed thousands, reduced cities to rubble and sent millions fleeing, had the opposite effect: it convinced Finland and Sweden to seek NATO membership, and helped pave the way for Ukraine’s bid for NATO. EU. — Reuters
Reference-www.irishtimes.com