Ukraine allies scramble to keep ammo flowing

BRUSSELS — Ukraine's Western backers pledged at a meeting on Tuesday to keep the huge amounts of ammunition and arms Kyiv needs flowing to the front line, as Russia battled for the city of Bakhmut.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has doubled down on his plea for Western aircraft after securing commitments for tanks, air defense and precision missiles.

But allies meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels remained focused on ensuring his forces have the ammunition, armored vehicles and air defenses they need on the ground to push back renewed Russian offensives.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said the priorities were to protect his country's skies, bolster promised tank supplies and ensure ammunition stocks.

Ukraine's Western supporters, spearheaded by the United States, have already supplied billions of dollars of arms to help Kyiv hold Moscow back.

Now, just under a year into the conflict, NATO said Russia appears to be starting a broader new offensive in eastern Ukraine.

NATO is scrambling to get its factories to pump out more, and allies are eyeing plans for joint weapons purchases, higher defense spending and longer-term contracts.

However, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has warned that Kyiv's current rate of expenditure was "many times higher" than the output in NATO countries.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Berlin had signed a deal with the manufacturer Rheinmetall to restart production of ammunition for Gepard air defense guns sent to Ukraine.

France and Australia also announced they would produce 155-mm artillery together.

Slovakia said it is willing to discuss sending Soviet MiG-29 planes to help replace losses to Ukraine's current stocks.

Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said Kyiv had requested US-made F-16 jets from the Netherlands.

Stoltenberg insisted aircraft is "not the most urgent issue now, but it is an ongoing discussion".

Hostility from West

The Kremlin said NATO was demonstrating its hostility toward Russia every day and was becoming more and more involved in the conflict.

A Russian official said on Tuesday that Russia will achieve all its aims.

"Of course, we will accomplish all the objectives on the battlefield, all the tasks set by the president will be implemented, but given unprecedented economic pressure, we need not just to survive, we need not just wait it out," Sergey Kiriyenko, first deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, said.

On the ground in eastern Ukraine, the head of Russia's Wagner paramilitary group said the fight for the symbolic prize was far from over.

"Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance and grinding, the meat grinder is working," Yevgeny Prigozhin said.

Russian troops have broken through the defenses of Ukrainian forces in part of the Lugansk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said early on Wednesday.

"The Ukrainian troops randomly retreated to a distance of up to 3 kilometers from the previously occupied lines," the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

It did not specify in which part of Lugansk the attack took place.

Agencies Via Xinhua