Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Thursday that the daily loss of between 100 and 200 Ukrainian fighters came from a “complete imbalance” between Ukraine and Russia, which has “thrown almost anything non-nuclear” at the front. war’s. in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week raised the daily death toll from the fighting in his country to 100, but Podolyak said it had risen. Ukrainian officials have pointed to growing casualties to highlight their urgent demands for more Western weapons, which were crucial to the country’s unexpected success in holding back Russia’s largest and best-equipped forces. After an attempt to overthrow Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in the early days of the war, Russia turned its attention to an eastern area of ​​coal mines and factories known as the Donbas. But his progress there is rapid. Podolyak said the delivery of state-of-the-art artillery systems would not only reduce Ukraine’s losses, but would help its nation’s forces regain occupied territories. The Ukrainian government is also looking for more multi-missile launchers. “There is something very important that our partners need to understand, and that is until Russia suffers a serious military defeat, no form of dialogue will be possible and they will continue to try to occupy parts of our country.” he said. “It will not happen,” Podolyak said. ROAD BATTLES Fighting in Donbass has been going on for more than two months, and the devastation continued on Friday. A provincial governor said Russian and Ukrainian forces had fought “for every home and every street” in Sivierodonetsk, a city that has recently come under constant attack. Sievierodonetsk is located in the last enclave of Luhansk province that has not yet been claimed by Russia or the Moscow-backed separatists. The governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, told the Associated Press that Ukrainian forces maintain control of the industrial zone on the outskirts of the city and some other sections amid painful blockade. An envoy to the People’s Republic of Luhansk, a self-proclaimed separatist region, said on Friday that some Ukrainian soldiers had been trapped inside a chemical plant on the outskirts of the city. “All escape routes have been cut off,” Rodion Mirosnik, Moscow’s ambassador for unrecognized democracy, wrote on social media. “They are told that conditions will not be accepted. “Only the handing over of weapons and the delivery,” he said. Mirosnik echoed previous allegations by a Russian defense official that civilians remained on the factory grounds. However, he stopped repeating claims that Ukrainian forces were forbidding them to leave. There has been no response from the Ukrainian side since Friday afternoon. BRITAIN CALLS ITS CITIZENS ‘FRIDAY “FRIDAY” The British government has said that Russia must take responsibility for the “false trial” of two Britons and a Moroccan man sentenced to death for fighting Russian forces in Ukraine. The British Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and the Moroccan Brahim Saadoun were convicted by a court ruled by pro-Moscow separatist authorities in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, which is not internationally recognized. The separatist authorities claimed that the men were “mercenaries” who were not entitled to the usual protection afforded to prisoners of war. The families of Aslin and Piner said the two men were longtime members of the Ukrainian army. Saadoun’s father told a Moroccan online newspaper that his son was not a mercenary and had Ukrainian citizenship. British Government Secretary Robin Walker said on Friday that it was “an illegal tribunal in a fictitious government”, but that the UK would use “all diplomatic channels to claim that it was prisoners of war who should be treated accordingly”. . British Foreign Secretary Liz Tras is scheduled to speak with her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Kuleba, later on Friday about the case. The United Kingdom has not announced plans to hold talks with Russian officials. It does not recognize the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk and will not formally contact the authorities there. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the ministry had not yet received any specific calls for British men, adding that “so far we can see that London was not interested in the fate of these citizens”. .

Karmanau contributed from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.

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