Ukraine Demands More Arms, Braces for ‘Big Battles’

Date: 10 April 2022 - 21:53

News ID: ۱۰۱۴۷۹

KYIV/BUZOVA, Ukraine (Dispatches) -- Ukraine said on Sunday it was seeking another round of European Union sanctions against Moscow and more military aid from its allies as it braces for “big battles” in the east of the country.
Ukraine says Russia has been gathering its forces in the east for a major assault and has urged people to flee.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter he had spoken on the phone with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about additional sanctions as well as more military and financial support for his country. Zelensky also discussed with Ukrainian officials Kyiv’s proposals for a new package of EU sanctions, his office said.
In a video address late on Saturday, Zelensky renewed his appeal for a total ban on Russian energy products and more weapons for Ukraine.
The EU on Friday banned Russian coal imports among other products, but has yet to touch oil and gas imports from Russia.
Mounting civilian casualties have triggered widespread international condemnation and new sanctions, in particular over hundreds of deaths in the town of Bucha, to the northwest of Kyiv.
A grave with at least two civilian bodies has been found in Buzova village near Kyiv, a Ukrainian official said, the latest such reported discovery.
Moscow has rejected accusations of war crimes by Ukraine and Western countries. It has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” its southern neighbor.
Russia is seeking to establish a land corridor from Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the eastern Donbas region that is partly held by Moscow-backed separatists, Britain’s defense ministry has said.
Satellite images released by private U.S. firm Maxar dated April 8 showed armored vehicles and trucks in a military convoy moving south toward Donbas through a town some 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of K

Some cities in the east are under heavy shelling with tens of thousands of people unable to evacuate.

Visits in recent days by top EU officials, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who brought pledges of more military and financial aid and new sanctions, showed the West’s demtermination to fully arm Ukraine.

But in the east, calls by Ukrainian officials for civilians to flee gained more urgency after a missile strike hit a train station on Friday in the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region that was full of people trying to leave.

Ukrainian officials said more than 50 people were killed.

Russia has denied responsibility, saying the missiles used in the attack were only used by Ukraine’s military. The United States claims it believes Russian forces were responsible.

Residents of the region of Luhansk would have nine trains on Sunday to get out on, the region’s governor, Serhiy Gaidai, wrote on the Telegram message service.

The war has forced about a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes, turned cities into rubble and killed or injured thousands.

On the battlefield, the Ukrainian defense ministry said on Sunday its armed forces used the British-made Starstreak MANPAD missiles for the first time and destroyed a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle Orlan-10.

The Russian defense ministry said it had destroyed the launching pads for Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems at the Chuhuiv aerodrome and near the village of Starobogdanovka in the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine.

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