It did not say how many troops were being deployed. The Ukrainian military said that the additional Russian forces were being sent first to a Russian city near the Ukrainian border and then to the northeastern Ukrainian city of Izium, where the Russians have met fierce resistance.
Members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces during a training exercise on Saturday near Lviv. The Kremlin’s deployment of troops from eastern Russia to the battle front in Ukraine suggested that Moscow could be trying to regain momentum in what the Pentagon has described as a “plodding” offensive in eastern Ukraine. “We need to keep in mind the needs of the military and our defenders,” the city’s administration said. In response, officials in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, urged residents to use public transportation rather than private vehicles to save fuel. Russia said it had also hit storage facilities for petroleum products used by the Ukrainian military.Ī senior Pentagon official said these types of attacks were intended to undercut the Ukrainian military’s ability to “replenish their own stores and to reinforce themselves.” The fuel shortages in Ukraine followed Russian attacks this week on Ukraine’s main producer of fuel products and other large refineries. Lavrov said, had nothing to do with supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty, but rather would enable the United States and the European Union to battle Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” Lavrov, contended that the United States and the European Union, by supplying more powerful weapons to Ukraine, were waging a proxy battle against Russia, regardless of the cost in civilian lives. Washington, worried about provoking Russia, declined the offer. Poland last month declined to provide its own fleet of MIG-29s to Ukraine directly, instead offering to fly the planes to a United States military base in Germany, where they could then be flown to Ukraine. Slovakia did not say explicitly that it would send its MIGs to Ukraine, but it has raised the possibility of doing so - provided that it can find an alternative way to protect its airspace, which the agreement with Poland would seem to achieve. Slovakia said that Polish F-16 jets would patrol its skies, freeing up a Slovak fleet of the Soviet-made MIGs.Īfter a meeting between the two countries’ defense ministers on Friday, Poland said its air force would begin patrols over Slovakia as part of their joint efforts to help Ukraine.įirefighters grappling with the aftermath of a missile attack this month on an oil refinery in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine.
The war has also paralyzed grain harvests in Ukraine, known as Europe’s breadbasket, disrupting global food supplies and worsening a food crisis in East Africa.Īs Western allies have poured more heavy weapons into Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland, both NATO countries, reached an agreement that could presage the transfer of MIG-29 warplanes to Ukraine. He said a Russian blockade of Ukrainian seaports meant that replacement stocks could not come in by tanker. “The occupiers are deliberately destroying the infrastructure for the production, supply and storage of fuel.” “Queues and rising prices at gas stations are seen in many regions of our country,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Friday in his nightly address.
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