Ukrainian servicemen fire with a French self-propelled 155 mm/52-calibre gun Caesar towards Russian positions at a front line in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on 15 June, 2022. – Ukraine pleaded with Western governments on 15 June, 2022 to decide quickly on sending heavy weapons to shore up its faltering defences, as Russia said it would evacuate civilians from a frontline chemical plant. Photo: ARIS MESSINIS / AFP
Ukraine urges Western arms deliveries as NATO depot destroyed
Russia claimed on Wednesday that its forces destroyed NATO-supplied weapons depot in Ukraine as West pledges more arms deliveries
Ukrainian servicemen fire with a French self-propelled 155 mm/52-calibre gun Caesar towards Russian positions at a front line in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on 15 June, 2022. – Ukraine pleaded with Western governments on 15 June, 2022 to decide quickly on sending heavy weapons to shore up its faltering defences, as Russia said it would evacuate civilians from a frontline chemical plant. Photo: ARIS MESSINIS / AFP
Russia said Wednesday its forces destroyed a depot containing NATO-supplied arms in western Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western allies to speed up arms deliveries to his country.
“Near the town of Zolochiv in Lviv region, high-precision long-range Kalibr missiles destroyed an ammunition depot of foreign weapons transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries, including 155-mm M777 howitzers,”
the defence ministry said in a statement.
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ARMS DELIVERIES
Ukraine said on Tuesday it had received just 10% of the weapons it requested from the West to deter Russia’s military intervention.
Russian forces are currently concentrating their firepower on the strategically important industrial hub of Severodonetsk as part of efforts to capture a swathe of eastern Ukraine.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Ukraine may not exist in two years.
‘UKRAINE MAY NOT EXIST IN 2 YEARS’
“I saw a report that Ukraine wants to receive LNG (liquified natural gas) under a lend-lease agreement from its overseas masters with payment for delivery in two years,”
Medvedev, who is now deputy head of the Security Council, wrote on Telegram
“And who said that in two years Ukraine will even exist on the world map?”
said the close ally of President Vladimir Putin.
ALSO READ: Ukraine has received 10% of arms requested: defence ministry
‘RESTRAINED BEHAVIOUR’
The Ukrainian president has appealed for heavy weapons from the West, criticising the “restrained behaviour” of some European leaders which he said had “slowed down arms supplies very much”.
“I am grateful for what is coming, but it must come faster,”
he told Danish journalists in an online briefing on Tuesday.
The United States and Britain have said they are providing Kyiv with long-range precision artillery batteries, defying warnings from the Kremlin.
© Agence France-Presse
