Ukraine said on Tuesday it was fighting off dozens of attacks, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces were exploiting delays in Western military aid and called the situation "extremely difficult."
A heightened Russian offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine saw Moscow's forces capture the key eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka last week in a boost ahead of the second anniversary of the Kremlin's February 2022 invasion.
The surge comes as Ukraine marks the 10th anniversary of the shooting of dozens of protesters in Kyiv during a revolution that toppled the country's Moscow-backed leadership.
The uprising also signaled the start of Russia's annexation of Crimea in the south of Ukraine and a pro-Russian separatist movement in the east.
"It has been 10 years since the attempts to destroy us and our independence," Zelensky said on Facebook on Tuesday.
"But we stood firm 10 years ago and continue to do so today," he said.
The head of Zelensky's office, Andriy Yermak, said Russia "sought to turn us into its colony but did not achieve its goal. We will win."
Sviataslav Yaremenko fought for several months in the industrial eastern Donetsk region in 2014, when Kremlin-backed separatists seized towns and cities there in the wake of the Maidan protests.
The 40-year-old joined again on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"It feels like a different life. After these two years, the fatigue is overwhelming," he told AFP in the town of Kostyantynivka, which was briefly captured by the separatists during the fighting a decade ago.
He said there was still resolve among Ukrainian forces to fight until Russia has been pushed out entirely but said he hoped the war would end "as soon as possible".
'It's an existential war'
"I think we'll have to keep fighting for several years – two or three more. It all depends on how much our Western partners will help us."
"We have a lot of needs – armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition. We need everything."
The Ukrainian army general staff said there had been "81 combat clashes" over the past 24 hours, adding that Russian forces had carried out 87 air strikes.
Five civilians died in a strike on a village near the Russian border in Ukraine's Sumy region, the army said.
The Ukrainian military has said it is critically short of ammunition and shells, worsened by the holdup of a $60-billion US aid package.
"The situation is extremely difficult in several parts of the front line, where Russian troops have concentrated maximum reserves," Zelensky said on Monday after visiting frontline troops in the Kharkiv region.
Russian troops "are taking advantage of the delays in helping Ukraine", Zelensky added, highlighting shortages of artillery, frontline air defense and longer-range weapons.
US President Joe Biden told Zelensky on Sunday that he was "confident" the Republican-dominated US Congress would approve the critically needed aid package.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday he also believed Congress would come through after it returned from recess.
He said his country would "continue our fight" with international support.
Asked about "Ukraine fatigue" in the international community at a press conference in Tokyo, Shmyhal said: "I believe the United States will support Ukraine also, like the European Union, like Japan, like all the G7 countries and the IMF and all international financial organizations."
"We can't speak about fatigue because it's an existential war," he said.
"You can't be fatigued when you're fighting for your future, for your life... for (the) global security order."
Biden has said another Ukrainian town could fall to Russia without the new US aid and Ukrainian commanders have predicted that Russia will move troops from Avdiivka to other parts of the front line.
Following the fall of Avdiivka, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said "Russian actors" had conducted a cyber operation "aimed at generating panic in the Ukrainian information space and weakening Ukrainian morale."
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Comments (3)
The White House should immediately introduce small package called “critical ammunition for Ukraine” worth about 2 billion. That would probably immediately be passed by Congress since small enough not to materially affect the political bargaining and grandstanding currently affecting the 60 billion package for Ukraine
I know things look worrisome now, but things will greatly improve once Ukraine has a squadron of F-16’s
Keeping within the rules of the Geneva Convention, a way must be found to deplete the Russian army to levels that Russia can’t accept.
In addition, the Russian people need to feel real hardship to the point where their leadership is replaced. Destroy the electrical generation plants surrounding Moscow, destroy the naval bases at Sevastopol and Novorossiysk and disable the Kerch Bridge.
Even though the Western world ,including the USA , have contributed a lot of financial assistance to Ukraine , these countries are not really charitable organizations . The previous Republican president has mentioned that he would give loans to Ukraine to be repaid later on ...
As a country rich with natural resources among which are Lithium, Iron , vast agricultural lands and others , Ukraine is supposed to benefit the USA and the Western with minerals and material for further economic development ...
If the Western capitalism and those that are the possible shadow governments related to the free masons , really cared for the well being and peace in Ukraine , they could have supplied Ukraine with much more developed weapons since 2014 ...It looks like prolonging these events weakens Russia as well after sanctions to get from the natural resources of Russia directly or indirectly with prices that favors the Western companies and even the Chinese large corporations ... The Western world sends or refurbrishes its older stock of weapons to replace it with newer ones ... They sell the older stocks and buy more upgraded ones . This could be financed by printing trillions of US dollars and Euros causing inflation to climb up globally ... This gives the Western world reasons and channels to expand their influence worldwide and contain the Chinese rise and expansion...
@Hope, Nice theory. How’s the weather in Moscow?