NATO warns that the war in Ukraine could last for years; war continues in the east

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the war in Ukraine could drag on for years and asked for continued support from Ukrainian allies as Russian forces fight for territory in the east of the country.

According to the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, Stoltenberg said that providing Ukrainian troops with cutting-edge weapons would increase their chances of liberating the eastern Donbas region from Russian control.

Unable to take the capital, Kiev, at the beginning of the war, Russian forces focused their efforts on trying to complete control of Donbas, which was in the hands of Russian-backed separatists before the February 24 invasion.

“We need to prepare for the fact that it may take years. We cannot stop supporting Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said, according to the newspaper. Even if the costs are high, not only in military support, but also in rising energy and food prices.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited Kiev on Friday with a proposal to train Ukrainian forces, also said on Saturday that it was important for Britain to provide long-term support and warned against the risk of “Ukraine saturation” with war. dragging.

In an opinion piece in London’s Sunday Times, Johnson said this meant “Ukraine gets weapons, equipment, ammunition and training faster than the occupier”.

The industrial city of Sievierodonetsk is one of the main targets of Moscow’s offensive to take control of the Luhansk region, one of the two provinces that make up the Donbas.

Russia said on Sunday that the attack on the city was proceeding successfully.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian television that the fighting made it impossible to evacuate people from the city, but “all Russian claims that they control the city are lies. They control the main part of the city, but not the whole city.”

Russia said it launched what it calls a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbor and protect the Russian-speaking people in that country from dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and its allies dismissed this justification as a baseless pretext for a war of aggression.

Ukraine was encouraged on Friday when the European Commission recommended that it gain candidate status, a decision that EU countries are expected to approve at a meeting next week.