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Ukraine: Negotiations with Russia after Western arms reinforcement

Ukraine wants to strengthen its position on the ground with the help of new arms deliveries from the West before resuming peace talks with Russia, Ukrainian negotiator David Arahamia was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“Our armed forces are ready to use (the new weapons) … and then I think we can start a new round of talks from a strengthened position,” he told Ukrainian national television on Friday.

Ukraine has said it has recaptured part of the industrial city of Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region, the epicenter of a Russian offensive to occupy eastern Donbass.

Earlier, Mikhail Pontolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, predicted that the war with Russia could last up to six more months.

“This could take another two to six months,” Pontoliak said in an interview with the Russian opposition website Medusa late Friday, with the volume of weapons on both sides being a key factor in determining the course of the conflict. .

“Another important factor is how the atmosphere in Europe, Ukraine and Russia can change over time,” he added.

According to Pontoliak, peace talks will take place only if the situation on the ground changes and Russia feels that it can no longer set the conditions.

He also warned that any territorial concessions to Russia would not mean the end of the war. “Some cities, such as Mariupol and Severodonetsk, where the fiercest fighting is raging, are virtually non-existent,” Zelensky’s adviser said.

Pontoliak estimated the Russians’ losses at 80,000, including both the dead and wounded of the Russian army, among the separatists and members of the Wagner mercenary group.

Now, he added, after a catastrophic initial phase of the war for Moscow, the losses of the two sides – Russia and Ukraine – are “comparable”.

Recently, the Ukrainian president had stated that up to 100 Ukrainian fighters are killed and another 500 are injured daily in the war.

The Russians blow up bridges in Severodonetsk

Russian forces are blowing up bridges over the Seversky Donetsk River to prevent Ukraine from bringing in military aid and delivering aid to civilians in the city of Severnodonetsk, the Luhansk region governor said on Saturday.

In a televised address, Sergei Gaidai stated that the Ukrainian army continues to hold its positions inside Severdonodetsk and repels Russian forces in many locations.

At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced today that its forces shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane carrying weapons and ammunition near the port of Odessa in the Black Sea.

The ministry stressed that Russian missiles also hit an artillery training center in the Sumy region of Ukraine where foreign trainers were working.

Another strike destroyed an outpost of “foreign mercenaries” in the Odessa region, he added.

* Ukraine: Russian army gathers forces around Slovyansk

Source: Capital

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