The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said, on Thursday, that he expected members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to send Kyiv the weapons it needed, asking them to act quickly before Russia launches another major offensive.

“Either you help us now – and I’m speaking about days, not weeks, or your help will come too late, and many people will die, many civilians will lose their homes, many villages will be destroyed. Exactly because this help came too late,” Kuleba said, after meeting NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

“I have no doubts that Ukraine will have the weapons necessary to fight. The question is the timeline. This discussion is not about the list of weapons. The discussion is about the timeline,” he told journalists.

It was reported that Ukraine was pushing the West to increase its arms supplies with heavier weaponry including air defence systems, artillery, armored vehicles and jets, as Moscow refocused its offensive on the east of the country.

“The battle for Donbas (in eastern Ukraine) will remind you of the Second World War with large operations manoeuvres, the involvement of thousands of tanks, armoured vehicles, planes, and artillery.

“Russia has its plan, we have ours, and the outcome of this battle will be decided on the battlefield,” Kuleba said.

When asked about the video footage circulating on social media of Ukrainian soldiers allegedly shooting a Russian captive, he said “there might be isolated incidents”, but that Ukraine’s army “observes the rules of warfare” and that violations would be investigated.

However, he added that observers failed to understand how it felt after seeing pictures of atrocities on the battlefield compared to “knowing that the person you know was raped four days in a row.”

“This is not an excuse to those who violate the rules of warfare on either side of the frontline, but there are some things which you simply can’t understand, I’m sorry,” Kuleba said.

AFP