According to an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian army lost up to 10,000 fighters in the first 100 days of the war. In a social media interview, Oleksiy Arestovych estimated that the Russian army is losing five to six times as many men as the Ukrainian army. “Yes, something like that,” Arestovych said when asked if this meant the Ukrainian army had lost up to 10,000 fighters in the first 100 days of the battle.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the fate of the war in his country endangered not only Ukraine, but the future of international order.
His country is attempting to push the Russians out of territories it has occupied from the beginning of the conflict, as well as defending itself against furious Russian strikes in the country’s east, particularly near Sievierodonetsk.
Further intense fighting was reported in Sievierodonetsk, the little city that has become the focal point of Russia’s assault in eastern Ukraine and one of the worst flashpoints in a war that is now in its fourth month. The mayor of Mariupol, to the south, claimed that sanitary services were failing and that bodies were festering in the streets.
Meanwhile, as better-equipped Russian forces pummelling the country’s east, Ukraine is begging with Western countries for more armaments and humanitarian aid to tackle escalating outbreaks of dangerous diseases. “This is now an artillery war,” Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, told the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom. “Everything now is contingent on what (the West) provides. In comparison to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces, Ukraine has only one.”
