Russia pounded Kharkiv with missiles on Thursday, killing seven people in a printing house, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called out his western allies for not providing enough military support to rebuff Russian attacks.
Moscow’s forces have hammered the northeastern city for months and launched a ground assault into the north of the surrounding region on May 10, an offensive that Kyiv says has stalled on two lines of attack for now.
‘NOT OUR WEAKNESS’
In a social media post, Zelenskiy faulted Kyiv’s international partners for not providing enough air defence systems or allowing Ukraine to use Western-provided weapons to strike missile launchers inside Russia.
“This weakness is not our weakness, but that of the world’s, which for the third year already has not dared to deal with the terrorists exactly as they deserve,” he said.
The Ukrainian leader’s rhetoric has grown increasingly frustrated as Kyiv’s outmanned and outgunned forces have struggled to fend off fierce Russian assaults along multiple parts of a more than 1,000-kilometre (620 mile) front line.
The new offensive thrust launched by Russian forces into the north of the Kharkiv region this month further stretched Ukraine’s troops, some of whom have been fighting since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Ukraine’s top commander said in a statement that Russia was now sending reserve forces to support its assault operations in the northern parts of the region after their troops had stalled on two main lines of attack.