By Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder
Kyiv (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy predicted Russia will escalate its attacks this week as European Union leaders consider whether to back his country’s bid to join the bloc and Russia its campaign to seize control of eastern Ukraine.
“Obviously we should expect Russia to intensify its hostile activities this week,” Zelenskyi said in a video address Sunday evening. “We are preparing. We are ready.”
Ukraine applied to join the EU four days after Russian troops crossed its border in February. The EU executive, the European Commission, on Friday recommended granting Ukraine candidate status.
Leaders of the 27-nation union will discuss the issue at a summit on Thursday and Friday and are expected to back Ukraine’s request despite concerns from some member states. The process can take many years.
The EU’s embrace of Ukraine would undermine one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated goals when he ordered his troops into Ukraine: to keep Moscow’s southern neighbors out of the West’s sphere of influence.
Putin said on Friday Moscow had “nothing against” Ukraine’s EU membership, but a Kremlin spokesman said Russia is closely following Kiev’s offer, especially given the increased defense cooperation among EU members.
On the battlefield, Russian forces are attempting to seize complete control of the eastern Donbass region, parts of which were already held by Russian-backed separatists prior to the February 24 invasion.
A key target of Moscow’s eastern assault is the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk. Russia said Sunday it had captured Metyolkine, a village on the outskirts of the city, and Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that many Ukrainian militants surrendered there. Ukraine’s military said Russia had had “partial successes” in the region.
The story goes on
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian television that a Russian attack on Toshkivka, 35 km (20 miles) south of Sievierodonetsk, also “had some success”.
In Sievierodonetsk itself, a city of 100,000 before the war, Gaidai said Russia controlled “most of it,” but not all of the city, after intense fighting. Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
Both Russia and Ukraine have continued heavy bombing around Sievierodonetsk “with little change on the front line,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
In Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk’s sister city, residential buildings and private homes were destroyed by Russian shelling, Gaidai said. “People are dying on the streets and in bomb shelters,” he said.
“WAR COULD LAST FOR YEARS”
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote in a note that “Russian forces will likely be able to take Sievierodonetsk in the coming weeks, but at the expense of concentrating most of their available forces on it small area”.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the war in Ukraine could last for years and urged Western governments to keep sending state-of-the-art weapons to Ukrainian troops, German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported.
“We have to be prepared for the fact that it can take years. We must not let up in our support for Ukraine,” Stoltenberg was quoted as saying.
Russia has said it has launched a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbor and protect Russian speakers there from dangerous nationalists.
Ukraine and its allies dismiss this as a baseless pretext for a war of aggression.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, northwest of Luhansk, the Russian Defense Ministry said its Iskander missiles had recently destroyed weapons supplied by Western countries.
Russian forces were attempting to close in on Kharkiv, which faced intense shelling early in the war, turning it into a “frontline city,” an official at Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.
The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region said the border village of Suzemka was shelled from northern Ukraine, one person was injured and a power plant was damaged.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia had deployed an anti-aircraft missile division in Bryansk and up to three tactical battalion groups had covered the border in Bryansk and neighboring Kursk regions.
In the direction of Kharkiv, the Russians tried to prevent Ukrainian forces from advancing to the border, she added.
In southern Ukraine, Western weapons helped Ukrainian forces advance 10 km (6 miles) towards Russian-held Melitopol, the mayor said in a video posted to Telegram from outside the city.
Australia’s Defense Ministry said it has sent the first four of 14 promised armored personnel carriers to Ukraine, part of a $200 million aid pledge.
An EU decision in favor of Kyiv’s permanent membership would put Ukraine on track to achieve a goal that would have been unattainable for the former Soviet republic before the Russian invasion.
“Whole generations fought for a chance to escape from the prison of the Soviet Union and fly like a free bird to European civilization,” Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk said in a statement.
(Reporting by Reuters offices and Maria Starkova; writing by Cynthia Osterman and Lincoln Feast, editing by Robert Birsel)