UK: Russia using more deadly weapons now

Kyiv: Ukrainian and British officials warned Saturday that Russian forces are relying on weapons with the potential to cause mass casualties as they try to make headway in capturing eastern Ukraine and as fierce fighting depletes resources on both sides.

Russian bombers have likely been launching heavy 1960s-era anti-ship missiles in Ukraine, the U.K. Defense Ministry said. The Kh-22 missiles were primarily designed to destroy aircraft carriers using a nuclear warhead. When used in ground attacks with conventional warheads, they “are highly inaccurate and therefore can cause severe collateral damage and casualties,” the ministry said.

Both sides have expended large amounts of weaponry in what has become a grinding war of attrition for the eastern region of coal mines and factories known as the Donbas, placing huge strains on their resources and stockpiles.

Russia is likely using the 5.5-tonne (6.1-ton) anti-ship missiles because it is running short of more precise modern missiles, the British ministry said. It gave no details of where exactly such missiles are thought to have been deployed. Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, told The Guardian newspaper that Ukraine was using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, and is now dependent on what the West gives it. —AP

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Civilians flee intense fighting in contested eastern Ukraine

Kyiv: Civilians fled intense fighting in eastern Ukraine on Friday as Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in a grinding battle of attrition for key cities in the country’s industrial heartland. Mostly women, children and elderly residents left on a special evacuation train that departed from the city of Pokrovsk and headed west.

“We live on the front line now,” said Svitlana Kaplun, whose family fled as shelling reached their neighbourhood in the city of Krasnohorivka. “The kids are worried all the time, they are afraid to sleep at night, so we decided to take them out.”

After a bungled attempt to overrun Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Russia shifted its focus to an eastern region of coal mines and factories known as the Donbas. The area borders Russia and has been partly controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

The fighting there has led to mounting casualties and renewed pleas from Ukraine to the West for more weapons. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, told the BBC in an interview aired Thursday that the daily loss of 100 to 200 Ukrainian soldiers is the result of a “complete lack of parity” between Ukraine and Russia. —AP

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Zelenskyy thanks Britain for ‘effective support’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked the U.K. for its “effective support” of Kyiv, following an in-person meeting with Britain’s defense chief. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace met Zelenskyy, as well as his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov, during an unannounced two-day visit to Kyiv.

“The head of state thanked the minister for the effective support of Ukraine by the British government in our fight against Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy’s press service said in a statement Friday. “The war showed who our real friends and partners are, not only strategic, but effectively acting today. Great Britain is one of such friends,” the statement said.

Zelenskyy has renewed a plea for heavy weapons to “restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” his office said in the statement. —AP