LAST UPDATE | 1 Jun 2022

BETWEEN 60 AND 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying on the battlefield every day, and another 500 wounded, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

“The situation in the east is very difficult,” Zelensky told US newsgroup Newsmax.

“We are losing 60 to 100 soldiers per day, killed in action, and around 500 people wounded in action,” said the 44-year-old leader, speaking through an interpreter.

The high level of losses come as Ukrainian troops try to block a powerful Russian concentration of forces that are seeking to take full control of the easternmost Lugansk Region.

Russian forces are reportedly close to seizing control of the city of Severodonetsk, after a lengthy siege involving intense artillery and aerial bombardment.

“We are holding our defensive perimeters” in the east, Zelensky said.

Indications from the battlefield suggest Russians have also experienced significant losses.

The Ukrainian government estimated last week that the Russians have lost more than 30,000 soldiers since beginning their invasion on February 24. 

German arms

Meanwhile, Germany has confirmed it will deliver to Ukraine an air defence system capable of shielding a “large city” from Russian air raids.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz made the announcement today, rejecting accusations his government had been slow to arm Kyiv.

Scholz told his parliament that Berlin would also be sending more weapons to Ukraine.

It comes after US President Joe Biden announced his country is sending a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine to aid its forces as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region.

Scholz said the German aid would “enable Ukraine to protect an entire major city from Russian airstrikes”, he said.

Germany will also deliver a tracking radar system capable of detecting enemy rocket artillery, he added.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock admitted, however, that it would take months for the air defence system to reach Ukraine.

The Iris T due to be transferred was originally bound for “another country” but manufacturer Diehl agreed to divert it to Ukraine instead, said Baerbock.

The air defence system has previously been delivered to Egypt.

The German army has Iris T-missiles in its inventory but not the complete surface-to-air system. It fires the missiles from Tornado or Eurofighter jets.

Referring to US President Joe Biden’s announcement that the United States would send more advanced rocket systems to Ukraine, Scholz said Berlin would “contribute what is within our technical capabilities”.

Under political pressure over the last weeks, Scholz’s government has agreed to send heavy weapons including self-propelled howitzers and Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

USA

The rocket systems sent by the US are part of a new $700 million (€653.3 million) tranche of security assistance for Ukraine from America that will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more, according to two senior administration officials.

The US decision to provide the advance rocket systems tries to strike a balance between the desire to help Ukraine battle ferocious Russian artillery barrages while not providing arms that could allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia and trigger an escalation in the war.

In a guest essay published in the New York Times, Biden confirmed that he has decided to “provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine”.

Biden had said on Monday that the US would not send Ukraine “rocket systems that can strike into Russia”.

Any weapons system can shoot into Russia if it is close enough to the border. The aid package expected to be unveiled today would send what the US considers medium-range rockets — they generally can travel about 70 kilometres.

The Ukrainians have assured US officials that they will not fire rockets into Russian territory, according to the senior administration officials. One official noted that the advanced rocket systems will give Ukrainian forces greater precision in targeting Russian assets inside Ukraine.

The expectation is that Ukraine could use the rockets in the eastern Donbas region, where they could both intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk.

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Sievierodonetsk is important to Russian efforts to capture the Donbas before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defence. The city, which is 145 kilometres south of the Russian border, is in an area that is the last pocket under Ukrainian government control in the Luhansk region of the Donbas.

Biden in his New York Times’ essay added: “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.”

It is the 11th package approved so far, and will be the first to tap the $40 billion in security and economic assistance recently passed by Congress.

The rocket systems would be part of Pentagon drawdown authority, so would involve taking weapons from US inventory and getting them into Ukraine quickly. Ukrainian troops would also need training on the new systems, which could take at least a week or two.

Officials said the plan is to send Ukraine the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is mounted on a truck and can carry a container with six rockets.

The system can launch a medium-range rocket, which is the current plan, but is also capable of firing a longer-range missile, the Army Tactical Missile System, which has a range of about 300 kilometres and is not part of the plan.

Since the war began in February, the US and its allies have tried to walk a narrow line: send Ukraine weapons needed to fight off Russia, but stop short of providing aid that will inflame Russian President Vladimir Putin and trigger a broader conflict that could spill over into other parts of Europe.

Over time, however, the US and allies have amped up the weaponry going into Ukraine, as the fight has shifted from Russia’s broader campaign to take the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, to more close-contact skirmishes for small pieces of land in the east and south.

To that end, Zelenskyy has been pleading with the West to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to help stop Russia’s destruction of towns in the Donbas.

The rockets have a longer range than the howitzer artillery systems that the US has provided Ukraine. They would allow Ukrainian forces to strike Russian troops from a distance outside the range of Russia’s artillery systems.

“We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said in a recent address.

US and White House officials had no public comment on the specifics of the aid package.

– Additional reporting from PA