Worthy Christian News > World News > Ukraine Warns Lack Of Weapons Adds To Human Suffering (Worthy News Radio)

Ukraine Warns Lack Of Weapons Adds To Human Suffering (Worthy News Radio)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

KYIV/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Ukraine’s defense minister warned Sunday that his country was losing lives and territories in its war with Russia because half the weapons promised by Western allies haven’t arrived yet.

The assessment came as Ukraine faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis after its second anniversary of war against the invading Russian army with Kyiv admitting that tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces have died in battle.

As the war-torn nation entered its third year of armed conflict against Russia, there was growing desperation Sunday on the battlefields.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov, revealed that his troops had built new fortifications and “thousands of strongholds.”

But, he made clear that delays in the supply of Western equipment led to massive setbacks and deaths on the battlefield. “Fifty percent of [Western] commitments are not delivered on time. So this means that in the mathematics of war, we will look to the enemy: Their economy is almost two trillion [dollars]. They used up to 15 percent of the official and unofficial budget for the war. That constitutes over 15 billion US dollars annually,” he noticed.

With House Republicans in Washington blocking a U.S. military aid package, Ukraine’s armed forces are running out of air defense missiles and artillery shells.

And F-16 jets promised by an international coalition including the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium have yet to arrive. They are expected sometime during Ukraine’s spring season, potentially still months away. Umerov said history showed that no country could win a war without “air superiority.”

31,000 SOLDIERS KILLED

“So basically whatever committed [by the West] that doesn’t come on time [in Ukraine], we’ll lose people, we’ll lose territories,” the minister warned.

In separate remarks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago, giving the first official figure for more than a year. However, these figures were complex to verify independently.

Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv that he could not disclose the number of wounded because it would help Russian military planning.

Those who survive are often returning from the battlefields with horrific wounds. Among them is Serhiy, a 27-year-old soldier.

He suffered terrible injuries when his vehicle hit a Russian anti-tank mine on Ukraine’s frontline near Mariinka.

After he slowly began to regain consciousness in his hospital bed in Kyiv, he realized he couldn’t see, speak, or feel his legs.

GENTLE VOICE

But he could hear his wife Valeria’s voice.

That gentle voice inspired him to set up groups to help wounded veterans, including one to build infrastructure for their life after the war.

His suffering and that of many others also motivated volunteers to help Ukraine see through another year of bloodshed.

Take Paul Hughes, a Canadian who risked his life to rescue a six-year-old girl from the Russian-occupied area of Zaporizhzhia and reunited her with her mother, who was in the Netherlands.

He recalled that angry Russian forces surrounded him before he could convince them to choose hope over death.

These are seen as crucial compassionate gestures in a war that the United Nations now says has exacted a “horrific human cost,” inflicting immense suffering on millions of civilians that will be felt “for generations.”

MORE SUFFERING

There was more suffering on Sunday as explosives by a Russian drone killed a 57-year-old man in Nikopol, across the Dnipro river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, captured by Russia at the start of the war, officials said.

Elsewhere in the eastern city of Kostyantynivka, a Russian missile strike wounded one, damaged a church, and destroyed the railway station—which is not in use, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Witnesses also watched in shock how dozens of apartments, shops, and administrative buildings were destroyed or damaged.

Hundreds of thousands of people, including soldiers and civilians, are believed to have been killed and injured on both sides of the battle zones.

Yet despite a lack of weapons, Ukraine still hopes to halt the Russian invasion and, along with injured veterans and other volunteers, start rebuilding on the ruins of Europe’s most devastating conflict in many years.