International: US Sends Fighter Jets To Ukraine As Russia Targets Eastern Cities

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Ukraine has received fighter planes and aircraft parts to bolster its air force in the face of Russia’s invasion, the Pentagon said Tuesday, declining to specify the number and type of aircraft nor their origin.

Ukrainian forces “right now have available to them more fixed wing fighter aircraft than they did two weeks ago,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

According to AFP, he noted the United States had “helped with the transshipment of some additional spare parts that have helped with their aircraft needs, but we have not transported the whole aircraft.”

Also on Tuesday, the US and allies agreed to impose more sanctions on Moscow as Russia pushed ahead with its new offensive targeting eastern Ukraine in the latest phase of the bloody invasion.

Russia’s defence ministry said that “high-precision air-based missiles” had hit 13 Ukrainian positions in parts of Donbas while other airstrikes “hit 60 military assets”, including in towns close to the eastern frontline.

Ukraine’s armed forces said fighting had increased throughout the east after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Russia had kicked off the widely anticipated offensive in Ukraine’s industrial heartland.

“The Russian occupiers intensified offensive operations along the entire line of contact,” the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a report published early Tuesday.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared to acknowledge the new offensive, stating that “another phase of this operation is beginning”, during an interview with media outlet India Today.

Following the new push, the United States and European Union agreed on the need to “increasing Moscow’s international isolation”, during a virtual meeting between US President Joe Biden and European leaders.

“We will further tighten our sanctions against Russia and step up financial and security assistance for Ukraine,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter.

Separately, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the death of thousands of Ukrainian civilians “a war crime” for which Russian President Vladimir bears responsibility.

Ahead of Russia’s advance, Ukrainian authorities had urged people in Donbas to flee west to escape, even as officials called off evacuations for a third straight day from frontline cities due to ongoing fighting.

In the Donbas town of Novodruzhesk, Nadya, 65, said “we are bombed everywhere”.

“It’s a miracle that we’re still alive,” she said, her voice trembling.

“We were lying on the ground and waiting. Since February 24 we’ve been sleeping in the cellar.”

Control of Donbas and the besieged southern port of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the Crimean peninsula that it annexed in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of much of its coastline and a major revenue resource.

Russia continued its relentless battle to capture Mariupol, as Moscow issued a fresh call for the city’s defenders to surrender and announced the opening of a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian troops who agreed to lay down their arms.

During an interview broadcast on CNN Tuesday, Pavlo Kyrylenko — who oversees the Donetsk region’s military administration — said Mariupol remained contested.

“The Ukrainian flag is flying over the city,” said Kyrylenko.

Putin has said he launched the so-called military operation in Ukraine on February 24 to save Russian speakers in Ukraine from a “genocide” carried out by a “neo-Nazi” regime.

However, organisers of a ceremony marking the liberation of the Nazi Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria said Tuesday that the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus were asked not to attend as their presence would be against the surviving prisoners’ wishes and their belief in peace and freedom.

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