Russia’s war against Ukraine could last years: NATO

Kyiv, Jun 20: The war in Ukraine could last for years, the head of Nato said on Sunday, as Russia stepped up its assaults after the European Union recommended that Kyiv become a candidate to join the bloc.

 

 

 

Jens Stoltenberg said supplying state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukrainian troops would boost the chance of freeing its eastern region of Donbas from Russian control, Germany’s Bild is Sonntag newspaper reported.

 

 

 

“We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine,” Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of the military alliance, was quoted as saying. “Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices.” British PM Boris Johnson, who visited Kyiv on Friday, also spoke of a need to prepare for a long war. This meant ensuring “Ukraine receives weapons, equipment, ammunition, and training more rapidly than the invader,” Johnson wrote in an opinion piece in London’s Sunday Times. “Time is the vital factor,” he wrote. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has rallied citizens with daily filmed messages, said he had visited forces in the southern Mykolaiv region, about 550km south of Kyiv. “Their mood is assured: they all do not doubt our victory,” he said in a video on Sunday that appeared to have been recorded on a moving train. We will not give the south to anyone, and all that is ours we will take back.” In Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, Zelensky said he had heard reports on destruction from Russian strikes. “The losses are significant. Many houses have been destroyed; civilian logistics have been disrupted,” he said. In the last few days, Russian attacks have intensified on Ukraine’s battlefields. Serhiy Gaidai, the Ukrainian-appointed governor of Luhansk, said: “All Russian claims that they control the town [Severodonetsk] are a lie. They control the main part of the town, but not the whole town.”

 

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In the twin city of Lysychansk across the river, Gaidai said on the Telegram messaging app, residential buildings and private houses had been destroyed, adding, “People are dying on the streets and in bomb shelters.” A fuel storage depot in the eastern town of Novomoskovsk exploded on Sunday, killing one person and injuring two after three Russian missiles had hit it, the regional administration chief said. “The offensive in the Severodonetsk direction is developing successfully,” Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a video statement. He said the settlement of Metyolkine, on the city's eastern outskirts, had been taken. “The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue to strike military targets on the territory of Ukraine,” he said.