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Ukraine can proceed to rely on arms provides from EU states because it inflicts “document” losses on Russia’s invading power, the EU’s overseas affairs chief has mentioned.
“The battle is at a crucial second, a turning level, and we can’t let Ukraine run out of apparatus and we is not going to [do so],” Josep Borrell mentioned after assembly EU defence ministers in Brussels Tuesday (17 Might).
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The Ukrainian facet was “having some extraordinary successes”, he mentioned, referring to information that it destroyed a Russian armoured column making an attempt to cross a pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donetsk river in east Ukraine 4 days in the past.
“Whether it is true that Russia has misplaced 15 p.c of her troops because the starting of the battle, it is a world document of the losses of a military invading a rustic,” Borrell added.
“The quantity of losses of the Russian military is actually spectacular,” he mentioned.
Borrell spoke after EU ministers accepted spending an additional €500m on arms to Ukraine from a joint fund known as the European Peace Facility, bringing the overall in joint spending on the programme to €2bn.
However particular person member states have been additionally sending further materiel on high of this, Borrell famous.
He declined to place a determine on the overall bilateral help, however mentioned: “It is way more than folks imagine”.
Borrell spoke the identical day that some 250 Ukrainian fighters besieged in a metal manufacturing unit in Mariupol in east Ukraine ended their resistance, leaving the shattered metropolis in Russian palms.
However, talking late Monday on Russian TV, a number one Russian navy analyst, former colonel Mikhail Khodaryonok, additionally admitted that the battle was going badly.
“The scenario, frankly talking, will worsen for us,” he mentioned, in a uncommon break from Russia’s triumphalist propaganda.
“The primary deficiency of our military-political place is that we’re in full geopolitical solitude and — nonetheless we do not need to admit it — virtually the entire world is towards us — and we have to get out of this example,” he added, amid contradictions and interruptions by the discuss present host.
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