WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine suffering high losses due to slow arms supplies, says Zelenskiy
Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because Western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday.
Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack.
Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was "very tough", adding that half of Ukraine's brigades there were not equipped.
"So you lose a lot of people. You lose people because they are not in armed vehicles ... they don't have artillery, they don't have artillery rounds," said Zelenskiy, speaking in English. CNN said the interview had been conducted on Friday.
Zelenskiy said weapons aid packages promised by the United States and European nations were arriving very slowly.
"We need 14 brigades to be ready. Until now ... from these packages we didn't equip even four," he said.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said Washington was working on a "substantial" new aid package for Ukraine.
Zelenskiy is due to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden this month and will present a plan for ending the war. The main elements are security and diplomatic support, as well as military and economic aid, he said.
The only thing Russian President Vladimir Putin fears is the reaction of his people if the cost of the war makes them suffer, Zelenskiy said. "Make Ukraine strong, and you will see that he will sit and negotiate".
Zelenskiy will also reiterate to Biden demands for Ukraine to be allowed to use U.S. long-range weapons to strike military targets deep into Russia.
Kyiv needs this permission because Russian jets blasting infrastructure had begun operating up to 500 km (310 miles) from the front lines compared with 150 km earlier, he told CNN.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Three Ukrainian jets shot down – Russian MOD
Russian forces have shot down three Ukrainian fighter jets over the last 24 hours, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.
Two Sukhoi Su-27 aircraft operated by Kiev were destroyed by the Russian Aerospace Forces, while Russian air defenses have shot down a Mikoyan MiG-29 plane, the ministry said in its daily update on Sunday.
During the same period, the Russian air defenses also intercepted a US-made HIMARS rocket, four French-made Hammer guided bombs, and 55 drones, it added.
Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces lost more than 2,200 troops along the front line and dozens of units of various equipment, including several US-made M777 towed artillery pieces and British L-119 howitzers.
The production of Su-27s and MiG-29s started in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, with the fighter jets intended to counter American fourth generation aircraft such as F-15s and F-16s.
In July, Forbes reported, citing Oryx defense analysis data, that Ukraine had some 125 jets including Su-27s, Su-25s, MiG-29s and others when the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated in February 2022. Around 90 of those aircraft have been destroyed since then, it added.
A “coalition” of European states, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgium, promised to supply Kiev with some 80 F-16s more than a year ago.
Ukraine, which had received fewer than a dozen of the US-designed jets by early August, lost its first F-16 during its maiden combat deployment at the end of the same month. The Western-supplied warplane went down during a Russian missile and drone attack on targets in Kiev, killing one of the country’s most experienced pilots, Aleksey ‘Moonfish’ Mes.
Ukrainian investigators have not yet announced the reasons for the crash. According to media reports, the versions on the table include technical problems, pilot error and friendly fire.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not report shooting down an F-16. Some Russian outlets claimed that the Western plane could have been destroyed on the ground by an Iskander missile during a strike on an airfield in western Ukraine.
In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the use of F-16s in the conflict will make them “a legitimate target” for Russian forces, warning that the planes will be struck even at airfields inside NATO countries if they operate from there.
Reuters/RT