Senior Ukrainian officials have bluntly described what they need to prevail on the battlefield, speaking ahead of a meeting of western defence ministers on Wednesday that Kyiv hopes will speed up the delivery of military aid.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, laid out a bold shopping list to tackle the main equipment shortages and repel Russian forces that are pounding Ukrainian soldiers with heavy artillery barrages in the eastern Donbas region.
“Being straightforward — to end the war we need heavy weapons parity,” Podolyak said on Monday, detailing what that meant in a tweeted list that included 1,000 155mm howitzers, 300 multiple-launch rocket systems and 500 tanks.