Ukrainian troops suffered setbacks after retaking parts of flashpoint eastern city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday warned his forces were outnumbered by a “stronger” Russian side.
“We’re holding out” in the key city but “there are more of them and they are stronger,” Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv, adding that Severodonetsk and neighbouring Lysychansk were both “dead cities now”.
With fighting raging in and around Severodonetsk, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blasted European countries for blocking his plane from travelling to Serbia. “The unthinkable has happened… This was a deprivation of a sovereign state of the right to carry out foreign policy,” Lavrov told journalists in Moscow.
Lavrov had been due to hold talks with top officials in Belgrade, one of Moscow’s few remaining allies in Europe since the launch of its military offensive in Ukraine. Zelensky admits his forces ‘outnumbered’ in Severodonetsk by ‘stronger’ Russian side
Lavrov repeated Moscow’s threat of retaliation if the West supplied more long-range weapons to Ukraine as promised, while Zelensky warned that the blockade on the country’s grain stocks could get worse.
With Russia bringing the weight of its artillery to bear around Severodonetsk — the largest city in the Lugansk region not under Russian control — more help was promised from abroad. The United Kingdom said it would follow the United States and send long-range missile systems to Ukraine, defying Russian warnings against supplying them to Kyiv.—AFP
