EU defence ministers were preparing to meet Wednesday to discuss a plan to rush one billion euros of ammunition to Ukraine as pressure mounts on Kyiv’s allies to boost supplies to its war effort, according to France24
Ukraine’s critical shortage of ammunition will top the agenda at the meeting in Stockholm, where European leaders will try to replenish the thousands of 155-millimetre howitzer shells Kyiv’s forces are firing each day in its fight against a grinding Russian offensive.
Fighting is raging around Ukraine’s eastern town of Bakhmut, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warning that if the town fell, Moscow would gain an “open road” for offensives deeper into his country.
“We understand that after Bakhmut, they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be an open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” Zelensky told CNN in an interview due to be broadcast in the United States on Wednesday.
During a visit to Canada, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday underscored European resolve to ward off Russian aggression.
“We will never accept that a military power with fantasies of empire rolls its tanks across an international border,” von der Leyen said in an address to Canada’s parliament.
But a report released Tuesday in the New York Times, which claimed that US officials had seen new intelligence indicating a “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, could raise difficult questions among the allies.
Senior Ukrainian official Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed the report, saying the country “had nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap”.
The Russian army vowed Tuesday to capture Bakhmut – a salt-mining town with a pre-war population of 80,000. The intense fighting around the town has been the longest and bloodiest in Russia’s more than year-long invasion, which has devastated swathes of Ukraine and displaced millions.
“Capturing (Bakhmut) will allow for further offensive operations deep into the defence lines of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told military officials during a televised meeting on Tuesday.
Zelensky told CNN that his armed forces were resolved to stay in Bakhmut.
“I had a meeting with the chief of staff yesterday and the chief military commanders online and offline … and they all (say) that we have to stand strong in Bakhmut,” he said.
“Of course, we have to think about the lives of our military. But we have to do whatever we can whilst we’re getting weapons, supplies and our army is getting ready for the counter-offensive.”
Ukraine got a boost on Tuesday when its western neighbour and steadfast ally Poland announced it was sending 10 promised Leopard tanks this week.