Zelenskyy pushes Europe for more arms as Russian offensive takes shape

A feared Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine appeared to be in motion Thursday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded in Brussels for enhanced European weaponry to ward off the advance of Moscow’s military.

Speaking to a gathering of European Union leaders, Zelenskyy defined the Russian Army as an “anti-European force” that seeks to “steal Europe,” continuing his effort to frame his country’s grinding, defensive war against Russia as a battle to preserve European values.

“This total war that has been unleashed by Russia is not just about territory in one part of Europe or another,” declared Zelenskyy, fresh off a visit to Britain. “The Kremlin has been consistently destroying, step by step, year after year, what we see as the basis of our Europe.”

That effort, Zelenskyy charged, has included plans to dismantle the democracy of Moldova, a country of less than 3 million people located across Ukraine’s southwest border. Moldova’s security service issued a statement confirming that it was aware of “subversive activities” aimed at undermining its government, but did not provide specific details.

In Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Russian forces were reported to be intensifying their attacks.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Ukrainian region of Luhansk, said Thursday that Russian attacks near the city of Kreminna had escalated “significantly.”

The Ukrainian government had warned in recent days that Russian troops were massing for another potential offensive.

Throughout Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, Russian missiles have pounded civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, and have sometimes created deadly scenes far from the front lines.

But President Vladimir Putin may be preparing to turn up the ferocity of his push in eastern Ukraine, where the two countries have been locked in bloody battles, as Russia approaches the second year of its war on its previously peaceful neighbor.

At a meeting with air industry representatives on Thursday, Putin claimed that Russia did not launch the conflict in Ukraine but is “trying to end” it, according to the Tass news agency, a Kremlin mouthpiece.

“These hostilities were started by Ukrainian nationalists and those who supported them in 2014,” Putin said, according to Tass.

A European investigative team said Wednesday that Putin likely signed off on supplying Moscow-backed separatists with a missile system that downed a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, potentially implicating the Russian leader in a crash that killed 298 people.

Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine last Feb. 24 over the outraged objections of President Biden and other Western leaders. Eleven months later, Ukraine has humbled the Russian forces, pushing the invaders back in the north and south.

But the potential Russian offensive figures to tax Zelenskyy’s army. He has spent this week working to secure military investments from Europe, including fighter jets, to strengthen his hand.

Zelenksyy’s office said Thursday that some European leaders had expressed their intent to provide fighter jets to Ukraine.

“I thank everyone who is helping Ukraine with vital supplies,” Zelenskyy said in his speech. “Weapons and ammunition. Energy equipment and fuel. Thousands of things that are essential to survive this all-out war.”

America has proved one of Ukraine’s strongest allies across the war, rallying the West against Russia, but Biden has turned down some of Zelenskyy’s most ambitious requests, sometimes citing the threat of World War III.

The U.S. has so far spurned Ukrainian requests for F-16s. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday appeared open to the future transfer of fighter jets.

“As the nature of the conflict, of the aggression has evolved, so too has the support that we’ve provided,” Bliken told reporters in Washington. “This is an evolving process, and we will continue to make judgments about what we think Ukraine needs and what it can be most effective in using.”

He also noted an American turnabout on battle tanks. The U.S. had long resisted Kyiv’s calls for tanks, but agreed last month to provide 31 precious Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

There have been rumblings that Biden might make a trip to Ukraine’s neighbor Poland to mark the anniversary of the war. But the president, who visited Warsaw early in the conflict, declined Thursday to confirm he plans to make another trip to Poland this month.

“I haven’t made a decision when I’m going to Poland or even if, for certain, I’m going to Poland,” Biden told reporters. “There’s a possibility I may go to Poland. But that’s all.”

Last March, Biden delivered one his fiercest denunciations of Putin while in Poland. “For God’s sake,” Biden said, “this man cannot remain in power.”

With News Wire Services