Russia has begun its ‘big revenge’ for Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday, as Russian forces claimed a series of incremental gains in his country’s east.
Zelensky has been warning for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault on Ukraine after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.
While there was no sign of a broader new offensive, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Russian troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.
This is as the United States and Germany continue to turn down Ukraine’s requests to send fighter jets to the embattled country, with President Biden on Monday firmly rejecting the idea Washington would send Kyiv F-16s.
President Biden responded “no” when asked on Monday if the United States will provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
Biden last week announced a decision to send 31 Abrams battle tanks to the country. Shortly after that announcement, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Defense secretary, told The Hill that he was optimistic about receiving Western fighter jets, like American F-16s.
The U.S., however, has resisted sending the fighter jets, with national security adviser John Kirby saying last week he “can’t blame the Ukrainians for wanting more and more systems.”
“It’s not the first time they’ve talked about fighter jets, but I don’t have any announcements to make on that front,” he added.
Ukrainians have sought American F-16s since early last year when Russia first invaded.
Pushilin’s adviser, Yan Gagin, said fighters from Russian mercenary force Wagner had taken partial control of a supply road leading to Bakhmut, a city that has been Moscow’s main focus for months.
A day earlier, the head of Wagner said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut.
Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne and Vuhledar, and Reuters could not independently verify the situations there. But the locations of the reported fighting indicated clear, though gradual, Russian gains.
Zelensky said Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy casualties on the Russian side, casting them as payback for Ukraine’s success in pushing Russian forces back from the capital, northeast and south earlier in the conflict.
“I think that Russia really wants its big revenge. I think they have (already) started it,” Zelensky said.
“Every day they either bring in more of their regular troops, or we see an increase in the number of Wagnerites,” he told reporters in the southern port city of Odesa.
Meanwhile,
Australia will work with France to produce ammunition for Ukraine’s war effort, in the latest sign relations between the two countries are recovering.
But an expert is warning the deal, which will see several thousand rounds of 155-millimetre ammunition sent to the front, is a drop in the ocean as Ukraine defends itself from Russian aggression.
Appearing alongside their French counterparts in Paris on Monday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles announced the ammunition will be produced as part of a “growing and deepening” relationship between the two countries.
“This forms part of the ongoing level of support that both France and Australia is providing Ukraine to make sure that Ukraine is able to stay in this conflict, and be able to see it concluded on its own terms,” Mr Marles said.
“It is a multi-million dollar project and it represents, a novel cooperation between Australian and French defence industry, and we’re really proud today to be able to make that announcement.”
Agency reports
