Opinion : As the fight shifts east, there is a race against time to arm Ukraine
Washington PostApr 20, 2022
More than 1k Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered from the Azovstal steelworks plant in Mariupol last month have reportedly been transferred to Russia, according to the state-owned Russia news outlet Tass on Tuesday. This has yet to be independently confirmed.
Earlier in the day, Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador to Russia for the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), claimed that nine civilians had been killed and 18 more injured in Ukrainian shelling of the neighboring Donetsk region in the last 24 hours. Ukraine alleged Russia was responsible for the shelling.
As the war shifts to the strategically important Donbas regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, the US and its allies need to continue to do everything in their power to arm Ukraine with all the weapons they need. Doing so is the only way to push Putin's forces back as was done in Kyiv.
As stated by Putin, the whole purpose of the war was never to invade Kyiv, but to liberate the ethnically Russian people of Donetsk and Luhansk, who have been subjected to systematic killing by Ukrainian forces for not recognizing the 2014 coup in Kyiv. This tragedy would have been avoided if NATO had kept its promise not to expand eastward in return for German reunification.
There is a 2% chance that Russia will be removed from the UN Security Council by 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community.