KYIV, June 11,2022: Ukraine sought more help from the West on Friday, pleading for faster deliveries of weapons to hold off better-armed Russian forces and for humanitarian support to combat deadly diseases.
In Sievierodonetsk, the small city that has become the focus of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war well into its fourth month, further heavy fighting was reported.
To the south, the mayor of Mariupol – reduced to ruins by a Russian siege – said sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.
“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera … The war which took over 20,000 residents … unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, will claim thousands more Mariupolites,” he told national television.
He called on the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to work on establishing a humanitarian corridor to allow remaining residents to leave the city, which is now under Russian control.
In a snapshot of the war’s wider impact, the U.N.’s food agency said reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia could inflict chronic hunger on up to 19 million more people globally over the next year.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for Ukraine to be incorporated as a part of the West, with binding guarantees for its protection.
Asking the EU to accept Ukraine as a membership candidate, he told a conference in Copenhagen by videolink: “The European Union can take a historic step that will prove that words about the people of Ukraine belonging to the European family are not just words.”
