KYIV, Nov 30 – NATO allies pledged more arms to Ukraine and equipment to help restore electricity supplies disrupted by Russian strikes, as President Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces were holding back against attempted Russian advances in many areas.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Wednesday that its forces had repelled six Russian attacks in the past 24 hours in the eastern Donbas region, while Russian artillery relentlessly shelled the right bank of the Dnieper River and the city of Kherson further south.
Ukrainians fled to air-raid shelters on Tuesday after air-raid warning sirens sounded, although the country was later given the all-clear. In the eastern Donetsk region, Russian forces pounded Ukrainian targets with artillery, mortar and tank fire.
Zelensky said the Russian military was also attacking Luhansk in the east and Kharkiv in the northeast, an area Ukraine recaptured in September.
“The situation at the front is difficult,” Zelenskiy said in his late-night video address. “Despite extremely heavy losses, the occupiers are still trying to advance” in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv. And “they’re planning something down south,” he said.
Ukraine regained control of Kherson in the south this month after Russian forces retreated. Reuters could not independently verify reports from the battlefield.
Foreign ministers from the NATO alliance, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, began a two-day meeting in Bucharest on Tuesday to look for ways to keep Ukrainians safe and warm and to contain Kiev’s military during the coming winter campaign.
“We need air defense, IRIS, Hawks, Patriots and we need transformers (for our energy needs),” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO meeting, listing various Western air defense systems.
“In a Nutshell: Patriots and Transformers Are What Ukraine Needs Most.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned NATO against providing Patriot missile defense systems to Ukraine and condemned the Atlantic alliance as a “criminal entity” for supplying weapons to what he called “Ukrainian fanatics”.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “trying to use winter as a weapon of war” as Moscow’s forces lose ground on the battlefield.
U.S. and European officials said the ministers would focus on non-lethal aid such as fuel, medical supplies and winter equipment, as well as military aid, in their talks. Washington said it would provide $53 million to purchase grid equipment.
US President Joe Biden has said providing more military aid to Ukraine is a priority, but Republicans who took control of the House of Representatives in January have talked about suspending more than $18 billion in funding.
CUMULATIVE DAMAGES
Russia has launched massive attacks on Ukraine’s electricity transmission and heating infrastructure since October in what Kiev and its allies say is a deliberate campaign to harm civilians, a war crime.
Snow fell in Kiev and temperatures hovered around freezing as millions of people in and around the capital struggled to heat their homes. A power company official said on Facebook that 985,500 customers in Kyiv were without power, and another electricity provider said the city would have emergency power outages on Wednesday.
In a short post on Telegram, Kherson Oblast Governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Tuesday that electricity had been restored to half of the city of Kherson.
Ukrainian forces attacked a power plant in Russia’s Kursk region on Tuesday, causing power outages, the region’s governor, Roman Starovoyt, said on the Telegram messaging app.
A large oil storage tank caught fire early Wednesday in Russia’s Bryansk region in northeastern Ukraine, the local governor said. No casualties were reported, he added, without commenting on the cause of the fire.
Moscow says harming civilians is not its goal, but that their suffering will only end if Kyiv accepts its unspoken demands. Although Kyiv claims to shoot down most of the incoming missiles, the damage is piling up and the impact is more severe with each strike.
A senior US military official said on Tuesday that Russia was firing unarmed cruise missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads at targets in Ukraine to try to deplete Kiev’s air defense capabilities.
The worst fire so far was on November 23rd. Millions of Ukrainians shivered in the cold and darkness after her. Zelensky told Ukrainians earlier this week to expect another one soon that will be at least as damaging.
There are no political talks about ending the war. Moscow has annexed Ukrainian territory it says it will never give up; Ukraine says it will fight until it gets back all the occupied land.