Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg praised recent Western agreements to ship heavy weaponry to Ukraine, adding he expected more “in the near future.” On Saturday, a residential building in the east-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro was struck, killing at least 30 people, prompting these remarks from the leader of the transatlantic military alliance the following day.
Stoltenberg told the German newspaper Handelsblatt that “the recent commitments for heavy warfare weapons are essential — and I anticipate more in the near future” before a meeting on Friday of defense officials from the bloc aimed to organize arms supplies to Kyiv. There will be a third meeting of what NATO calls the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday at US Ramstein Air Base in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. When asked if Germany should follow suit and start sending heavier weaponry to Ukraine, Stoltenberg stated, “We are in a key phase of the battle.” The combat is really intense right now. As a result, we must ensure that Ukraine has access to the weaponry it needs to prevail and maintain its sovereignty. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a plea for additional heavy Western weaponry on Saturday, stating that the only way to combat Russian “horror” was with military force. When asked, “What do we need? These weapons that are stored in the warehouses of our allies,” Zelenskyy declared in his evening speech. After British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that his nation will be the first Western power to send heavy tanks to Kyiv, he made this statement. The pressure on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his coalition government to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks, built in Germany, has been increased by signals of readiness from Poland and Finland. This tendency might signal a larger shift on the part of European partners, who have refrained from actively providing Ukraine with heavy weaponry since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022.
The Russian defense ministry said last week that it had “finished the liberation” of Soledar, a city at the transportation junction of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk area, marking what it called Russia’s first important battlefield win after months of losses and stagnation. The Ukrainian government has refuted these accusations and stated that combat was still intense in the Soledar area. According to a Sunday report from the Institute for the Study of War in the United States, “Ukrainian troops are very unlikely to still control positions within the village of Soledar proper.”