Ukraine fights off Russian surge on anniversary of revolution

KYIV – Ukraine said on Feb 20 it was fighting off dozens of Russian attacks as Moscow claimed the recapture of a bridgehead, days after it seized a key town amid stalled Western aid deliveries to Kyiv.

Days before the two-year anniversary of the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Moscow was exploiting delays in Western military aid,

calling the situation “extremely difficult”.

A heightened Russian offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine saw Moscow’s forces capture the key eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka last week, after months of battle.

The surge comes as Ukraine marks the 10th anniversary of the shooting of dozens of protesters in Kyiv during a revolution that toppled the country’s Moscow-backed leadership.

The uprising also led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine’s south and a pro-Russian separatist movement in the east.

“It has been 10 years since the attempts to destroy us and our independence,” Mr Zelensky said on Facebook, on Feb 20.

“But we stood firm 10 years ago and continue to do so today,” he said.

The head of Mr Zelensky’s office, Mr Andriy Yermak, said Russia “sought to turn us into its colony but did not achieve its goal. We will win.”

Mr Sviataslav Yaremenko fought for several months in the industrial eastern Donetsk region in 2014, when Kremlin-backed separatists seized towns and cities there in the wake of the Maidan protests.

The 40-year-old joined again on Feb 25, 2022, the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“It feels like a different life. After these two years, the fatigue is overwhelming,” he told AFP in the town of Kostyantynivka, which was briefly captured by the separatists during the fighting a decade ago.

He said there was still resolve among Ukrainian forces to fight until Russia has been pushed out entirely but said he hoped the war would end “as soon as possible”.

“I think we’ll have to keep fighting for several years – two or three more. It all depends on how much our Western partners will help us.

“We have a lot of needs – armoured vehicles, weapons, ammunition. We need everything.”

‘An existential war’

The Ukrainian army general staff said there had been “81 combat clashes” over the past 24 hours, adding that Russian forces had carried out 87 air strikes. Five civilians died in a drone strike on a village near the Russian border in Ukraine’s Sumy region, the army said.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Putin in a televised meeting that Moscow forces have reclaimed Krynky, a Ukrainian bridgehead on the Moscow-occupied side of the Dnipro River. But this was denied by Ukraine on Feb 21.

Ukraine in 2023 established positions around the tiny east bank village, crossing into the Russian-occupied side of the Dnipro river.

President Putin, meanwhile, called the Ukrainian retreat from Avdiivka a “chaotic flight”.

The Ukrainian military has said it is critically short of ammunition and shells, worsened by the holdup of a US$60 billion (S$80 billion) US aid package.

“The situation is extremely difficult in several parts of the front line, where Russian troops have concentrated maximum reserves,” Mr Zelensky said on Feb 19, after visiting front-line troops in the Kharkiv region.

Russian troops “are taking advantage of the delays in helping Ukraine”, Mr Zelensky added, highlighting shortages of artillery, front-line air defence and longer-range weapons.

US President Joe Biden told Mr Zelensky on Feb 18 that he was “confident” the Republican-dominated US Congress would approve the critically needed aid package.

The leaders of Group of 7 countries will discuss the war in Ukraine during a virtual meeting on Feb 24, with Mr Zelensky expected to participate, according to Italy, which currently holds the group’s rotating presidency.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Feb 20 that his country would continue to fight.

Asked about “Ukraine fatigue” in the international community at a press conference in Tokyo, Mr Shmyhal said: “We can’t speak about fatigue because it’s an existential war. You can’t be fatigued when you’re fighting for your future, for your life... for (the) global security order.”

Mr Biden has said another Ukrainian town could fall to Russia without the new US aid and Ukrainian commanders have predicted that Russia will move troops from Avdiivka to other parts of the front line.

Following the fall of Avdiivka, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said “Russian actors” had conducted a cyberoperation “aimed at generating panic in the Ukrainian information space and weakening Ukrainian morale”. AFP