KYIV, May 22 (Reuters) – Ukraine ruled out a ceasefire or any territorial concessions to Moscow as Russia stepped up its attack in the eastern and southern parts of the country, pounding the Donbas and Mykolaiv regions with air strikes and artillery fire.
Kyiv’s stance has become increasingly uncompromising in recent weeks as Russia experienced military setbacks while Ukrainian officials grew worried they might be pressured to sacrifice land for a peace deal.
“The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff said in a Twitter post on Sunday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda offered Warsaw’s backing, telling lawmakers in Kyiv on Sunday that the international community had to demand Russia’s complete withdrawal and that sacrificing any territory would be a “huge blow” to the entire West.
“Worrying voices have appeared, saying that Ukraine should give in to (President Vladimir) Putin’s demands,” Duda said, the first foreign leader to address the Ukrainian parliament in person since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. read more
“Only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future,” he said.
Speaking to the same parliamentary session, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed a plea for stronger economic sanctions against Moscow.
“Half-measures should not be used when aggression should be stopped,” he said.
Shortly after both finished speaking, an air raid siren was heard in the capital, a reminder that the war raged on even if its front lines are now hundreds of kilometres away.
Zelenskiy said at a news conference with Duda that 50 to 100 Ukrainians are dying every day on the war’s eastern front in what appeared to be a reference to military casualties.
Russia is waging a major offensive in Luhansk, one of two provinces in Donbas, after ending weeks of resistance by the last Ukrainian fighters in the strategic southeastern port of Mariupol.
The heaviest fighting focused around the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko told Ukrainian television on Sunday.
The cities form the eastern part of a Ukrainian-held pocket that Russia has been trying to overrun since mid-April after failing to capture Kyiv and shifting its focus to the east and south of the country.
But he and other leaders stressed that Russia shouldn’t keep control of territory it has seized during hostilities. Although Russian forces failed to take the capital, Kyiv, and the northeastern city of Kharkiv, they have captured the cities of Kherson and Mariupol in southern and southeastern Ukraine.
Bloody fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, which the United States believes is part of Moscow’s strategy to annex broad swaths of the country and install leaders loyal to Russia in a move echoing the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
“We want everything returned, and Russia doesn’t want to return anything,” Zelensky said in the interview. “And this is what it will be in the end.”
His comments come as the Russian invasion falters and military leaders are overhauling their strategy by firing commanders and increasingly relying on artillery and long-range weapons after losing thousands of troops.
President Joe Biden on Monday plans to unveil a long-sought economic plan for engaging a region coming increasingly under the influence of China, as he enters the second leg of his debut tour of Asia.
Even as analysts and experts view Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-term objectives as unsustainable, the invasion continues to exact a toll on Ukraine, particularly in the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions, where Russian troops are concentrated.
Zelensky said Sunday that as many as 100 soldiers a day are killed in the hard-hit east.
The southern port city of Severodonetsk — one of the last major cities in eastern Luhansk province still in Kyiv’s control — has emerged as the latest flash point in hostilities.
Regional authorities urged the thousands remaining in the once 100,000-person city to flee as heavy shelling continues and after Russian forces on Saturday destroyed a bridge used for evacuations and aid deliveries.
Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said that “if they destroy one more bridge, then the city will be fully cut off, unfortunately.”
Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, warned in a post on the Telegram messaging app that Severodonetsk is becoming “a new Mariupol” — another southern port city now in ruins with civilians cut off from basic necessities after months of bombardment.
Russia contends that Mariupol is entirely under its control after Ukraine last week ended its defense of a steel plant where civilians and fighters holed up for weeks.
The mayor of Mariupol, where the plant is located, has warned that the city is “on the verge of an outbreak of infectious diseases” because of the war.