Delays in US aid ‘hamper Ukrainian forces’

KIEV

Civilians continue to die across Ukraine as analysts warned that delays in U.S. military assistance would see Kiev struggle to fight off Russian offensives.

Russian shelling killed four people in the eastern Ukraine region of Donetsk, authorities said yesterday, as Moscow's forces aim to push deeper into the war-battered industrial region.

The region's governor said attacks late April 14 on the mining town of Siversk, which is flanked by Russian forces, had claimed the four lives.

"The city was shelled yesterday evening with multiple rocket launchers. It has now been established that four men aged 36 to 86 died as a result of this shelling," Vadym Filashkin wrote on social media.

Siversk, which had an estimated pre-war population of 11,000 people, has come under persistent Russian shelling since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia claimed to have annexed the entire Donetsk region in September 2022 despite not fulling controlling the region.

Officials have warned that the eastern front line has become increasingly precarious as Ukraine struggles to secure more arms from allies and recruit more troops.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, warned that delays in Western military assistance would increasingly hamper Ukraine’s ability to push back Russian advances.

With the war in Ukraine entering its third year and a vital U.S. aid package for Kiev stuck in Congress, Russia has used its edge in firepower and personnel to step up attacks across eastern Ukraine. It has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs, dropped from planes from a safe distance, to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.

In its report, the ISW said that Russian forces were prioritizing grinding, tactical gains with operational-level efforts focusing on the cities of Lyman, Chasiv Yar, and Pokrovsk.

“The Russian military command likely assesses that Ukrainian forces will be unable to defend against current and future Russian offensive operations due to delays in or the permanent end of U.S. military assistance,” the think tank said.

Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on April 13 that Ukraine’s battlefield situation in the industrial east had “significantly worsened in recent days,” as warming weather allowed Russian forces to launch a fresh push along several stretches of the more than 1,000-kilometer-long front line.

In an update on the Telegram messaging app, Syrskyi said that Russian forces had been “actively attacking” Ukrainian positions near the cities of Lyman, Bakhmut and Pokrovsk, and beginning to launch tank assaults as drier, warmer spring weather made it easier for heavy vehicles to move across previously muddy terrain.