Kyiv:
Russia said Wednesday its forces destroyed a depot containing NATO-supplied arms in western Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western allies to speed up arms deliveries to his country.
“Near the town of Zolochiv in Lviv region, high-precision long-range Kalibr missiles destroyed an ammunition depot of foreign weapons transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries, including 155-mm M777 howitzers,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine said on Tuesday it had received just 10% of the weapons it requested from the West to deter Russia’s military intervention. Russian forces are currently concentrating their firepower on the strategically important industrial hub of Severodonetsk as part of efforts to capture a swathe of eastern Ukraine.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Ukraine may not exist in two years.
“I saw a report that Ukraine wants to receive LNG (liquified natural gas) under a lend-lease agreement from its overseas masters with payment for delivery in two years,” Medvedev, who is now deputy head of the Security Council, wrote on Telegram.
“And who said that in two years Ukraine will even exist on the world map?” said the close ally of President Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian president has appealed for heavy weapons from the West, criticizing the “restrained behavior” of some European leaders which he said had “slowed down arms supplies very much.”
The United States and Britain have said they are providing Kyiv with long-range precision artillery batteries, defying warnings from the Kremlin.
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