Ukraine sought more help from the West on Friday, calling for faster arms deliveries to better retain Russia’s armed forces and humanitarian support to fight deadly disease outbreaks.
In southern Ukraine, the mayor of the port city of Mariupol, turned into ruins by the Russian siege, said sewage systems were broken and corpses left to rot in the streets, leading to an “outbreak of dysentery and cholera.”
“The war, which took over 20,000 inhabitants … unfortunately, with these outbreaks of infection, will take thousands more Mariupol residents,” Mayor Vadim Boychenko told national television.
He called on the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to work on creating a humanitarian corridor that would allow other residents to leave the city, which is now under Russian control.
In a snapshot of the wider impact of the war, the UN Food Agency said reduced exports of wheat and other foodstuffs from Ukraine and Russia could cause chronic starvation of up to 19 million more people worldwide next year.
Siege of Severodonetsk
Further heavy fighting is reported in Severodonetsk, the small town that has become the focus of Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest hotspots in the war in its fourth month.
Russia hopes to take over the entire territory of the eastern province of Luhansk, which has been pushing Ukraine to cede itself to separatists along with neighboring Donetsk, an area known as Donbass, where it has supported a 2014 separatist insurgency.
To this end, the Kremlin is concentrating its forces in the battle for Severodonetsk.
Ukrainian troops have largely withdrawn from the city’s residential areas, but have not backed down on the east bank of the Seversky Donets River. Russian forces are also pushing from the north and south to try to encircle the Ukrainians, but have made limited progress so far.
Both sides say they have made huge sacrifices in the battle for the city.
IN PICTURES Day 107 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
Calls for Western support, weapons
In a video speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for the country to be included as part of the West, with binding guarantees for its protection.
Calling on the EU to accept Ukraine as a candidate for membership, he told a conference in Copenhagen: “The European Union can take a historic step that will prove that words about the people of Ukraine, who belong to the European family, are not just words.”
The war in the east, where Russia is focusing its attention, is now largely an artillery battle in which Kyiv is seriously superior, Ukrainian officials say.
This means that the course of events can only be reversed if the West keeps its promises to send more and better weapons, including missile systems, which Washington and others have promised.
“Now this is an artillery war,” Vadim Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy military intelligence chief, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
“Now it all depends on what (the West) gives us. Ukraine has one artillery to 10 to 15 Russian artillery cannons.
WATCH What happened in week 16 of Russia’s attack on Ukraine:
What happened in the 16th week of Russia’s attack on Ukraine
With millions of tons of grain stranded in Ukrainian ports due to Russian blockades, the UN has accused the Kremlin of creating a global food crisis. Russia also launched an air strike on Kyiv for the first time in months as fighting continued to escalate in the Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv districts. Here is a summary of the war in Ukraine from 4 to 10 June.
Germany is among the largest arms suppliers since Russia’s invasion, but has been criticized for its slow supply of heavy weapons, which Kyiv says needs. German officials say they plan to revise rules on arms exports to facilitate the armament of democracies such as Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a “special military operation” in Ukraine in February, saying his goal was to disarm and “denazify” Russia’s neighbor. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked aggressive war of conquest.
Ukrainian officials said Putin’s speech Thursday – which drew a parallel between what he described as a new quest to reclaim Russian lands and Tsar Peter the Great’s historical achievements – proved Moscow’s goal was conquest.
“Putin’s confession of land grabbing and his comparison to Peter the Great prove that there was no ‘conflict’, but only a bloody conquest of the country under imaginary pretexts of genocide,” Zelensky’s aide Mikhail Podoliak wrote on Twitter.
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