TURIN. Kyiv no longer has ammunition to counterattack. Soon there may no longer even be those left to defend themselves. The situation on the battlefield is terrible, while the entire Ukrainian leadership continues to incessantly make appeals and requests for help, Russia increases its pace, intensifies the raids, finds new means and new weapons to do as much damage as possible.
«The air defense is running out, if the Russians continue to hit Ukraine every day as they have done for the last month, we could run out of missiles». Volodymyr Zelensky said this on national TV last night, launching the most dramatic appeal after weeks of incessant attacks by the Kremlin army. The president’s message is to his early allies, to the West, who knows very well that the deterioration of the situation for Ukraine is moving towards the point of no return and, however, does little or does so too slowly. Zelensky stressed that although Kyiv has enough air defense supplies for the immediate crisis posed by the Russian offensive, it is forced to make difficult choices about what to protect, reiterating the need to receive the Patriots. The “difficult” choice is between creating an anti-aircraft shield to save the cities, or ensuring defense for the front line which it holds – for now – at the cost of enormous sacrifices.
The bombings of Kharkiv continue, as do the carpet bombings throughout the country, and the fighting on the Khasiv Yar line is to the death. Russian troops are reportedly carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers, according to officials at the front who say they have been subjected to regular attacks by small drones launching tear gas and other chemical substances (known as CS ), the use of which is prohibited in wartime by the Chemical Weapons Convention. Units deployed near Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region say gas attacks are “almost daily”.
If the gas and the double-tap attacks (two strikes on the same target at close range to kill as many civilians as possible) were not enough, Moscow has inaugurated the season of glide bombs, bombs, the glide bombs that Russia is apparently overthrowing in massive quantities over Ukraine: these are modified devices with a guidance system and fins, a cross between a guided bomb and a missile, capable of being launched not only from aviation, but also from rocket launchers and with devastating effects. Ukrainian soldiers “are being massively attacked by guided aerial bombs that wipe out our positions,” Foreign Minister Kuleba told the Financial Times. Russian forces have dropped nearly 3,500 guided aerial bombs since the start of the year, a record 16 times those used in all of 2023, according to defense officials.
Time, and the word “defeat”, play a heavy role: Kyiv, about to run out of missile supplies to counter the continuous Russian attacks from the sky and without the 60 billion dollars currently frozen by the American Congress, began to purchase projectiles for air defense systems on its own, “since international assistance is not enough,” Zelensky said: “Today we rely on our contracts. We started working separately in different countries without waiting for help.”
The prospects are frightening, even more so after the revelation of Donald Trump’s alleged secret plan revealed by the Washington Post to put an end to the conflict if he were re-elected to the White House, that is, to pressure Kyiv to cede Crimea and the entire Donbass to Fly. The tycoon, firmly leading the polls in key American states, is believed to be convinced that “for some areas of Ukraine it would be fine to be part of Russia”. Vladimir Putin is waiting for nothing else. The situation on the ground has been worrying for weeks, the Ukrainians now rely almost exclusively on drones to attack. Even extremely delicate targets such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, controlled by the Russians, where an armed aircraft would have exploded “damaging a truck parked near the canteen”.
And now, in one of the most difficult moments since the beginning of the invasion, as the Ukrainian army prepares for a new offensive that could arrive at the end of May, Zelensky has once again urged Washington. He did so by pronouncing a hitherto taboo word, with its inevitable weight: “If the US Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war.” —