West pledges more support for Ukraine amid fierce fight for Donetsk towns

Western powers pledged to supply more military aid and other assistance to Kyiv as its forces continued to battle with Russian troops and mercenaries for control of the towns of Soledar and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock paid an unannounced visit on Tuesday to the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, which is just 35km from the Russian border, and senior European Union and Nato officials pledged to keep pressure on Moscow, where the Kremlin said the West had already become an “indirect party” to the conflict.

“This city is a symbol of the absolute insanity of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and of the endless suffering that people, especially here in the east of the country, are confronted with every day,” Ms Baerbock said in Kharkiv, a largely Russian-speaking city that has been severely damaged in what the Kremlin calls its military operation to protect Russian speakers.

“Above all, I want to listen to the residents who are being so hard hit by the war in this bitterly cold winter, when temperatures are currently dropping in the night to -15 Celsius,” she added, while vowing that Ukrainians could “rely on our solidarity and support” and expect deliveries of humanitarian aid along with “further arms deliveries”.

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About 200km to the southeast, Ukrainian troops exchanged intense artillery fire and fought at close quarters with Russian forces that are trying to storm the neighbouring towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the partly occupied Donetsk region.

“The defenders of Soledar are now doing everything they can to exhaust the enemy, to reduce their potential as much as possible, so that even any minor tactical successes of theirs – secured thanks to their numerical advantage and with heavy losses – lead to a major Pyrrhic victory,” said Ukrainian military spokesman Serhii Cherevatyi.

Russian occupation officials in the Donetsk region said it was only a matter of time before Moscow’s troops and mercenaries took Soledar and Bakhmut, which have been the focus of huge military efforts by the Kremlin’s forces following a string of battlefield reverses.

[ Wartime life in Moscow: fear, loathing and deep denial as Russians uphold the illusion ]

Senior European Union and Nato officials pledged more support for Ukraine on Tuesday after signing a declaration on deeper co-operation between the two blocs.

“We should continue to strengthen our partnership between Nato and the EU. And we should further strengthen our support for Ukraine,” said Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that “Ukraine must obtain all the military equipment it can manage to defend the homeland.”

“That means, of course, advanced air defence systems, but also other types of advanced military equipment, as long as it is necessary to defend Ukraine,” she added.

Nato states and their allies have increased weapons supplies to Ukraine to help it withstand the all-out invasion launched by Russia last February, which has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions of civilians.

Kyiv is pressing western countries to provide it with modern main battle tanks, and Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said after talks with Ms Baerbock that he thought Germany would soon provide Kyiv with its Leopard tanks, “to end this war with Ukraine’s victory. And [then] there will be no war in Europe.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “Nato and the US ... have de facto become an indirect party to the conflict by flooding Ukraine with weapons, technology and intelligence,”

“We can see that the build-up in supplies is growing daily and expanding to include more complicated and powerful weapons, while the amount and range of weapons and ammunition are also increasing,” he added.