Russia said yesterday its forces destroyed a depot containing Nato-supplied arms in western Ukraine as Kyiv showed no signs of obeying a Russian ultimatum to surrender the eastern city of Severodonetsk.
“Near the town of Zolochiv in Lviv region, high-precision long-range Kalibr missiles destroyed an ammunition depot of foreign weapons transferred to Ukraine by Nato countries, including 155-mm M777 howitzers,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine said on Tuesday it had received just 10 percent of the weapons it requested from the West to deter Russia’s military intervention.
Earlier yesterday, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Ukraine may not exist in two years.
“I saw a report that Ukraine wants to receive LNG (liquified natural gas) under a lend-lease agreement from its overseas masters with payment for delivery in two years,” Medvedev, who is now deputy head of the Security Council, wrote on Telegram
“And who said that in two years Ukraine will even exist on the world map?” said the close ally of President Vladimir Putin.
Russian forces are currently concentrating their firepower on the strategically important industrial hub of Severodonetsk as part of efforts to capture a swathe of eastern Ukraine.
Moscow had told Ukrainian forces holed up in a chemical plant in the shattered city to stop “senseless resistance and lay down arms” from yesterday morning, pressing its advantage in the battle for control of eastern Ukraine.
Plans announced by Moscow to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians holed-up in the plant were disrupted, Russian-backed separatists said, blaming shelling by Ukraine.
More than 500 civilians are trapped alongside soldiers inside the Azot chemical factory where Ukrainian forces have resisted weeks of Russian assaults.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed for heavy weapons from the West, criticising the “restrained behaviour” of some European leaders which he said had “slowed down arms supplies very much”.
Nato defence ministers yesterday gathered in Brussels to discuss sending more heavy weapons to replenish Kyiv’s dwindling stocks. At the meeting, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urged allies not to “lose steam” on sending weapons to Ukraine, reports AFP.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the spike in global food prices was a direct consequence of the war, not of sanctions against Russia as Moscow claimed.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a call that Beijing would keep backing Moscow on “sovereignty and security”, according to state media.
The two leaders also agreed to ramp up economic cooperation in the face of “unlawful” Western sanctions, the Kremlin said.
The UN’s Ukraine commission yesterday confirmed receiving multiple allegations of rights abuses by Russian forces, but said it was too early to say whether they constituted war crimes.
