The President of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has once again gone begging the international community, this time, he is calling on friendly world powers to cover an expected budget deficit of $38 billion next year for his war-torn country, with Moscow’s invasion also badly devastating the economy.
In the meantime, fatal Russian shelling has continued to rain down the eastern Donbas city of Bakhmut, where big smoke was sighted rising from fierce battles between Moscow’s forces and Ukraine’s army trying to keep them at bay.
Africa Today News, New York reports that from eyewitnesses pro-Russian authorities in the southern Ukraine city of Melitopol are now in firm control of Moscow’s forces, said a car bomb had exploded near the offices of a local media outlet injuring five people.
At an international reconstruction conference for Ukraine in Berlin, Zelensky urged European leaders to offer greater financial support for his country more than eight months after Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine.
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‘At this very conference we need to make a decision on assistance to cover next year’s budget deficit for Ukraine,’ Zelensky said via video-link. ‘It’s a very significant amount of money, a $38 billion deficit,’ he added.
Also, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asserted that rebuilding Ukraine would be a “generational task” that must start immediately, even as Russia’s invasion rages on.
“What is at stake here is nothing less than creating a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century — a generational task that must begin now,” Scholz said.
Russian forces, after being pushed back from Kyiv early in the invasion and the northeastern Kharkiv region, have set their sight on wresting territory in Donbas, an eastern industrial zone.
In Bakhmut, a town Russians have been eyeing for weeks, an AFP journalist saw smoke rising despite heavy rain and a Ukrainian missile shooting down a Russian drone.
A 28-year-old soldier, who declined to give his name to reporters over security concerns, claimed Ukraine’s forces had made gains in the region overnight, but declined to give further details.
Seven civilians were killed and three injured the wine-making and salt-mining town a day earlier, the regional governor said Tuesday.
Three bodies of civilians killed earlier were also discovered in two places in the region, which has been at the centre of intense fighting with the Russian army for months, said Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
The Russian-backed authorities there said Tuesday that more than 22,000 residents had fled from the town and nearby settlements over to the left bank of the Dnipro river following calls to evade Ukraine’s advance.