President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine traveled to the southern Kherson region on Thursday for his second trip along the frontline in two consecutive days, visiting areas ravaged by Russia’s campaign to destroy energy infrastructure.
Mr Zelensky’s visit, which he chronicled on the Telegram messaging app, came a day after his trip to the disputed eastern city of Bakhmut and as the World Bank released a report putting the cost of rebuilding Ukraine at $411 billion. estimated — a significant increase from the $349 billion figure the bank released in September. The new number is likely to grow as the war continues, the bank said.
The bank’s report was released as European Union leaders embarked on Thursday for a two-day summit in Brussels to discuss Europe’s competitiveness in the global economy and aid to Ukraine. The leaders signed off about plans to provide the Ukrainian government one million artillery shells in the next 12 months – a decision made amid the growing military demands of Kiev in a war with no end in sight.
Ukraine is burning through shells faster than the West can produce or supply them. Ukrainian officials say they urgently need the ammunition, which consists of 155 millimeter shells for use in Western guns, as they try to beat off an intensified Russian attack in eastern Ukraine and prepare for a spring counteroffensive.
Mr Zelensky took part in the meeting of the 27 EU Heads of State by video, call for more support. From a moving train carriage, he expressed his gratitude for the help provided so far, but pleaded for more and faster help.
He urged leaders to impose more sanctions on Russia, urged them to speed up the process so his country could join their bloc and said Ukraine needed long-range missiles and modern fighter jets.
In a growing shift among NATO allies increasingly willing to arm Kiev, Spain’s first shipment of modern battle tanks to Ukraine will be delivered next week, Spain’s defense ministry said on Thursday. The move came after the Polish president announced this month that his country would switch four Soviet-designed MIG fighters to Ukraine.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has also agreed travel to China next week for talks with the country’s leader Xi Jinping and said he intended to discuss Beijing’s framework for negotiating a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
The United States said on Tuesday it would send M1 Abrams tanks later this year much faster than expected to Ukraine. And on Thursday, Finland’s defense minister said the country had agreed to send three more Leopard tanks to Kiev and was examining its request for Hornet fighter jets.
The Slovak Ministry of Defense said the first four of 13 Soviet-designed fighter jets promised to Ukraine had been delivered. That delivery is not expected to significantly change battlefield dynamics. The country’s defense minister, Jaroslav Nad, said the Slovak jets needed repairs. They will most likely be used for spare parts for Ukraine’s Soviet-era jets. Kiev’s troops are wrestling with Soviet-era equipmentthat requires regular maintenance.
Mr. Zelensky’s trips to front-line areas came days after Russian President, Vladimir V. Putin, visited the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been occupied by Russian troops since one of Moscow’s most brutal campaigns. Mr Putin’s journey is believed to be the closest to the frontline since the Russian leader’s invasion.
The Ukrainian leader said on Thursday he had visited Posad-Pokrovske, a farming village that was largely destroyed during the battle for the city of Kherson which is about 20 miles away. Although Ukraine recaptured the city in November in one of the most significant victories of the war, Moscow still controls territory in the wider Kherson province.
Russian troops have used positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to shell the city of Kherson on the other hand. But Ukrainian forces said on Thursday they were escalating artillery attacks on Russian positions east of the Dnipro.
“We are working to make the enemy feel our presence and our pressure,” Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army’s southern command, told national television.
During the winter, parts of the region were without electricity and water for weeks Russian troops rained rockets, missiles and drones on energy infrastructure in an apparent attempt to freeze residents.
“We must ensure full recovery and protection of our energy sector!” Mr. Zelensky said inside a message on Telegram on Thursday.
But Mr. Zelensky said he saw evidence of the reconstruction during his trip to Kherson. “Electricity and water supply restoration is underway here, the medical clinic is being rebuilt and people are returning,” he said on Telegram.
Destruction from the war and loss of livelihoods have pushed more than seven million Ukrainians into poverty, undoing 15 years of development, according to the World Bank. The proportion of the population living in poverty rose from 5.5 percent to 24.1 percent during the first year of the war, the bank said.
High inflation has a disproportionate impact on low-income households, the report said. In the Kherson region, prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose 73.5 percent in December compared to prices a year earlier.
The most urgent needs for 2023 — including energy, housing, critical infrastructure and basic services — will cost $14 billion, the report estimates. This week, the International Monetary Fund said it had reached a tentative deal to give Ukraine a Loan of $15.6 billion for four years to help close a budget deficit and pay for recovery efforts.
The two-day EU summit took place amid rising tensions with China, as European leaders grappled with the fallout from a visit by Mr Xi to Moscow this week. In a joint statement, they said the bloc “urges all countries not to provide material or other support to Russia’s war of aggression”.
The plans contain caveats, but represent an important step in military aid.
European leaders also discussed setting aside an additional €3.5 billion ($3.8 billion) to reimburse member states for providing military aid to Ukraine, but did not decide on specific details.
At the end of the first day of the meeting, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also told reporters that the bloc was organizing an international conference to track down Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. Ms von der Leyen said the kidnappings were “a war crime” and “a terrible reminder of the darkest times of our history”.
Now that the war is past its first year, it is leading to “widespread destruction” of Ukraine’s healthcare system, according to another. report released Thursday, this one from Doctors Without Borders, who said the conflict was directly endangering even people far from the front lines.
Chronic diseases go untreated, the report said. Villagers are not allowed to leave their homes to get much-needed medicines. Some Ukrainians have made dangerous journeys through risky terrain to receive care as their nearest medical center was destroyed. And land mines had been planted in some hospitals abandoned by Russian troops.
The group, a non-governmental organization that provides humanitarian medical care, said its teams only worked in Ukrainian-controlled areas, despite a request to do the same in Russian-controlled areas.
It said that on October 8, 11 and 15 its teams “discovered the presence of anti-personnel mines in functioning hospitals” in areas previously under Russian occupation in the Kherson and Donetsk regions and in the Kherson and Donetsk regions. northeastern city of Izium.
“The use of landmines is widespread in frontline areas,” Vincenzo Porpiglia, a project coordinator for the group in Donetsk, said in a statement. “But to see them placed in medical facilities is shocking – a remarkable act of inhumanity.”
Anushka Patil, Daniel Victor And Joseph Bautista reporting contributed.