Ukrainian troops holding line at Bakhmut appeal for help as global security meeting starts

Ukrainian soldiers fighting to hold off a Russian push on the small eastern city of Bakhmut pleaded for more weapons from the outside world as senior Western leaders met in Munich on Friday to assess the year-long war shaking Europe.

“Give us more military equipment, more weapons, and we will deal with the Russian occupier, we will destroy them,” said Dmytro, a serviceman standing in the snow near Bakhmut which Russia’s Wagner mercenary group is attacking.

Nearly one year into the invasion, President Vladimir Putin’s troops are intensifying assaults in the east.

Ukraine is planning a spring counter-offensive, for which it wants more, heavier and longer-range weapons from its Western allies.

Europe’s worst conflict since World War Two war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions from their homes, pummelled the global economy and made Putin a pariah in the West.

He says he is fighting for Russia’s security against an aggressively expanding NATO alliance, but Kyiv and its allies cast the invasion as a colonial-style land grab in Ukraine, formerly part of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.