LAST UPDATE | 8 Mar 2023

EU DEFENCE MINISTERS are preparing to meet today to discuss a plan to rush €1 billion of ammunition to Ukraine as pressure mounts on Kyiv’s allies to boost supplies to its war effort.

Ukraine’s critical shortage of ammunition will top the agenda at the meeting in Stockholm, where European leaders will try to replenish the thousands of 155-millimetre howitzer shells Kyiv’s forces are firing each day in its fight against a grinding Russian offensive.

Fighting is raging around Ukraine’s eastern town of Bakhmut, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warning that if the town fell, Moscow would gain an “open road” for offensives deeper into his country.

“We understand that after Bakhmut, they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be an open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” Zelensky told CNN in an interview.

During a visit to Canada yesterday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underscored European resolve to ward off Russian aggression.

“We will never accept that a military power with fantasies of empire rolls its tanks across an international border,” von der Leyen said in an address to Canada’s parliament.

However, a report released yesterday in the New York Times, which claimed that US officials had seen new intelligence indicating a “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, could raise difficult questions among the allies.

Senior Ukrainian official Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed the report, saying the country “had nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap”.

The Russian army has vowed to capture Bakhmut, a salt-mining town with a pre-war population of 80,000.

The intense fighting around the town has been the longest and bloodiest in Russia’s more than year-long invasion, which has devastated swathes of Ukraine and displaced millions.

Ukraine said it had identified a soldier who had gone missing in the area being shot dead in a video that sparked outrage on social media and as UN chief Antonio Guterres headed to Kyiv for talks.

The footage shows what appears to be a detained Ukrainian combatant standing in a shallow trench, smoking, and being shot after saying “Glory to Ukraine”.

Russia has appeared intent on capturing the town at all costs.

“Capturing (Bakhmut) will allow for further offensive operations deep into the defence lines of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told military officials during a televised meeting yesterday.

Russian mercenary group Wagner has spearheaded the attack on Bakhmut and its head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is locked in a rift with Russia’s military leadership, appeared to mock Shoigu, saying he had “not seen him” near the battlefield.

Zelensky told CNN that his armed forces were resolved to stay in Bakhmut.

“I had a meeting with the chief of staff yesterday and the chief military commanders online and offline … and they all (say) that we have to stand strong in Bakhmut,” he said.

“Of course, we have to think about the lives of our military. But we have to do whatever we can whilst we’re getting weapons, supplies and our army is getting ready for the counter-offensive.”

Prigozhin has claimed that his forces had taken “all the eastern part” of Bakhmut, the east Ukrainian town where fighting has raged for weeks.

“Wagner units have taken all the eastern part of Bakhmut, all that’s east of the Bakhmutka river” that bisects the town, he said in an audio message released by his press service.

Pressure has been mounting on Ukrainian troops trying to hold the town against Russian soldiers hoping to capture it no matter the cost.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the army was intent on defending Bakhmut but warned the Russian army would have an “open road” into eastern Ukraine if it captured the town.

The battle for Bakhmut, a salt-mining town with a population of 80,000 before the fighting began, has been the longest and bloodiest in Russia’s operation, which has devastated swathes of Ukraine and displaced millions over the past year.

© AFP 2023