KYIV, June 11 (Reuters) – Ukraine on Saturday called on the West to speed up arms deliveries to resist Russian army shelling in the Donbass and on the international community to provide humanitarian aid in the face of the spread of diseases like cholera in Mariupol.
In Sievierodonetsk, a lock in eastern Ukraine, in the Luhansk region, which the Russian army is trying to encircle, deadly street battles oppose the two sides which probably suffer high losses, said the British intelligence in its daily update on the conflict.
The war in Donbass, Moscow’s main strategic objective more than three and a half months after the start of its invasion operation, is now mainly an artillery battle in which Ukraine is vastly outmatched in firepower, say Ukrainian officials.
“It all depends now on what (the West) gives us,” Deputy Director of Ukrainian Military Intelligence Vadym Skibitsky told British daily The Guardian. “Ukraine has one artillery piece for every 10-15 Russian artillery pieces.”
On the ground, the Ukrainian general staff said on Saturday that Russian forces had secured positions in two villages near Sievierodonetsk.
According to the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaidai, the Russians control most of the city, which had 100,000 inhabitants before the war.
The main road linking Bakhmout to Lyssitchansk and Sievierodonetsk is the target of constant shelling but the positions there remain unchanged, added Serhiy Gaidai.
Russian forces are trying to advance north and south of Sievierodonetsk but have made only limited gains, according to Ukraine and British intelligence.
According to Kyiv, Russia has regrouped troops, supplied with ammunition and fuel, in anticipation of offensives on two cities in the Donetsk region, Sloviansk and Siversk.
CHOLERA IN MARIOUPOL
In southern Ukraine, the mayor of Mariupol, a port city in Donbass reduced to rubble after a weeks-long siege by Russia, said health infrastructure was destroyed and corpses rotted in the streets .
“There is an epidemic of dysentery and cholera,” Vadym Boitchenko told Ukrainian television. “The war which took away 20,000 inhabitants (…) unfortunately with these infections, will cost the lives of thousands of additional inhabitants.”
The mayor of Mariupol called on the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to set up a humanitarian corridor to allow residents still there to leave the city, now controlled by Moscow.
In a video message broadcast overnight, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky accused Russia of seeking to “break every city in Donbass”.
“Sievierodonetsk, Lyssychansk, Bakhmut, Sloviansk, many, many others,” he said. “All these ruins were once happy cities.”
Each side claims to inflict many losses on the opposing side.
An adviser to Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych, estimated in a social media interview that Russia was losing an average of five to six times more fighters than Ukraine.
Asked if this meant that the Ukrainian army had lost up to 10,000 men in the first hundred days of war, he replied: “Yes, something like that.” (Report Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder, with Reuters editorial staff, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)