Ukraine's army chief warns of 'extremely difficult' front line

KYIV – Ukraine’s new army chief said on Feb 14 the situation on the front line with Russia was “extremely difficult” as delays to much-needed US military aid cast a shadow over the war effort.

The 1,000km front line has barely moved in more than a year, with Kyiv’s forces back on the defensive after last year’s failed counter-offensive and military leaders acknowledging Russia has a manpower advantage.

The warning came as

Kyiv said it had destroyed another Russian warship

in the Black Sea. It was the latest in a string of successful attacks on Russia’s naval fleet and Nato praised it as a “great victory for Ukrainians.”

But, on his first visit to the front line in eastern Ukraine since becoming Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky painted a bleaker picture.

“The operational environment is extremely complex and stressful,” said Col-Gen Syrsky, who replaced the popular General Valery Zaluzhny last week in a major military shake-up.

“The Russian occupiers continue to increase their efforts and have a numerical advantage in personnel.”

Along with Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, Syrsky had visited troops fighting around

the key flashpoint of Avdiivka.

Russia is mounting a major attempt to capture the city and has it surrounded on three sides.

Ukrainian army spokesman Dmytro Lykhoviy said on Feb 14 Russia had 50,000 soldiers around the front-line city.

‘Doing everything possible’

“We are doing everything possible to prevent the enemy from advancing deep into our territory,” Col-Gen Syrsky said in a post on social media.

His troops were operating in “extremely difficult conditions”, he added.

Russian military bloggers and local officials have said Ukrainian forces appear to be conserving ammunition as supplies run low.

Ukraine relies on Western – predominantly US – support to fund and equip its armed forces with the shells, bullets, rockets, tanks and air defences it needs to hold off Russian attacks.

But the latest multi-billion-dollar aid package has been held up in the US Congress since 2023 amid political wrangling, threatening to hobble Ukraine’s defensive capacity.

The US Senate this week

approved US$60 billion (S$80 billion) of funding for Ukraine,

but it is unclear whether it will win support in the House of Representatives.

As

Ukraine’s new Russian-born army leader

warned of a strenuous situation on the battlefield, Kyiv also said a Russian strike on a hospital in the eastern town of Selydove had killed three people.

The victims were a 38-year-old pregnant woman, as well as another women and her nine-year-old son, Ukraine’s general prosecutor said.

A dozen others, including a six-month old baby, were wounded in the strike.

Ship hit

Despite the conflict having ground to a stalemate on land, Ukraine claimed yet more success in the Black Sea on Feb 14, saying it had

sunk another Russian warship off the coast of Crimea.

Kyiv’s military intelligence unit and its armed forces said they had “destroyed” Russia’s Caesar Kunikov landing ship in an attack using naval drones.

The strikes inflicted “critical holes on the left side and (the ship) began to sink”, the GUR intelligence agency said.

The hit takes the tally of Russian warships Kyiv claims to have destroyed since the start of the war to 25 –

a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet,

which Kyiv said had 74 vessels before the invasion.

AFP was unable to verify those claims.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg hailed the latest hit.

“This is a great achievement, a great victory for Ukrainians,” Mr Stoltenberg told journalists in Brussels.

Ukraine published footage of what it said was a sea drone approaching the Russian ship. There is a blast, and a large fire can be seen.

In Moscow, the Kremlin refused to comment on the reports and there was no mention of the ship in the defence ministry’s daily briefing.

Russia typically does not respond to Ukrainian claims of successful operations.

But military bloggers with close links to the Russian armed forces said it was likely the ship had been hit by Ukrainian forces.

“Time after time the Black Sea fleet has turned out to be incompetent and unable to repel attacks from Ukrainian formations,” said the Rybar Telegram channel, one of the largest pro-war Russian accounts. AFP