Ukraine facing grinding campaign as it waits for weapons

KYIV (AP):

Ukrainian forces, locked in a grinding battle for control of the country’s east, struggled to hold off Russian troops and buy themselves some time on Thursday while they await the arrival of the advanced rockets and anti-aircraft weapons promised by the West.

With the arms deliveries possibly weeks away, Ukraine is looking at a prolonged period of gruelling combat, military analysts said.

“There’s a time lag, so the next few weeks are going to be pretty tough for our Ukrainian friends,” said retired US Lt Gen Ben Hodges, former commanding general of US Army forces in Europe.

Ukraine is intent on exhausting Russian forces, as evidenced by street-to-street fighting in the critical eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, said Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov.

“And this can go on for quite some time,” he warned.

Britain, on Thursday, pledged to send sophisticated medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine, joining the US and Germany in equipping the country with some of the advanced weapons it had been begging for shooting down aircraft and destroying artillery and supply lines.

The Kremlin warned of “absolutely undesirable and rather unpleasant scenarios” if the latest Western-supplied weapons are fired into Russia.

“This pumping of Ukraine with weapons ... will bring more suffering to Ukraine, which is merely a tool in the hands of those countries that supply it with weapons,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russian forces continued to pound towns and cities overnight, and to tighten their grip on Sievierodonetsk in Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region, which Moscow is intent on seizing. An estimated 800 people, including children, were holed up in bomb shelters at a chemical factory under attack in the city, the regional governor said.

Britain’s Defence Ministry reported that Russia had captured most of Sievierodonetsk, one of two cities in Luhansk province that had remained under Ukrainian control. The Donbas is made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.