Exclusive: Deputy head of military intelligence says it’s an artillery war now and ‘everything depends on what the west gives us’

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Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

Vladimir Putin compares his actions in Ukraine to conquests of Peter the Great; Zelenskiy says Ukraine ‘holding on’ to key frontline cities in Donbas

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Former Danish prime minister and former secretary general of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has been speaking on Sky News in the UK. He is currently running the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, which tomorrow will focus on the situation in Ukraine. He said:

The Ukrainian people are actually fighting on behalf of all of us, and we must stop Putin otherwise he will not stop. He will continue to conquer peaceful neighbours if he isn’t stopped in Ukraine.

Silence in Sievierodonetsk lasts only when guns are reloaded. Street fights continue in the regional centre.

Russians adhere to their primitive tactics: heavy artillery fire, then - attempts to break through. The same thing happened in the already destroyed Rubizhne and Popasna.

Luhansk governor says most of eastern city now in Russian hands and it is no longer possible to rescue civilians

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Ukrainian forces have been pushed back to the outskirts of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk amid heavy fighting in the city and frontline villages to the south as Russia pursues a breakthrough in Donbas, regional leaders have said.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, said most of the city was now in Russian hands and that it was no longer possible to rescue civilians stranded there.

Ukrainian forces fight to stave off Russian attacks in Sievierodonestk as 800 civilians reportedly take refuge in a chemical factory in the city

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Non-stop street fighting and bombardments as Kremlin seeks full control of Luhansk province

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Russian forces are bombarding Ukrainian positions in the symbolic eastern city of Sievierodonetsk with intense artillery barrages, airstrikes and non-stop street-by-street fighting, according to the governor of Luhansk province.

After a Ukrainian counterattack over the weekend, Russian soldiers were seeking to regain the initiative. They were trying to move forward to dislodge Ukrainian fighters from their last stronghold in an industrial zone. Between 10,000 and 11,000 civilians remain in the city.

Long deployments and a lack of training, support, food and equipment all affecting morale as war drags on

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Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s east has brought it some battlefield success as its military has advanced slowly in fierce fighting in Donbas.

But those gains have come at a high price for the Russian invasion force, with evidence that high-level casualties are growing and that some units may be approaching exhaustion as the war moves past its 100-day mark.

UK and US have so far promised a handful; official says with 60 they can stop Russians ‘dead in their tracks’

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Ukraine needs 60 multiple rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia, according to an aide to the country’s presidency.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to the president’s chief of staff, told the Guardian that while he believed the rocket launchers were “a gamechanger weapon”, not enough had been committed to turn the tide in the war.