Russia looks to block Western arms supplies to Ukraine, officials warn airstrike offensive will increase

A top Ukrainian official warned Thursday that Russia is looking to ramp up its offensive in southern Ukraine and block Western arms supplies as the war carries on for nearly 100 days.

Russia is expected to increase air and missile strikes as it attempts to advance in the southern regions of Ukraine along the Black Sea. 

Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Department of the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, told reporters during a briefing that officials assess Russia will specifically target civilian infrastructure and military facilities. 

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Gromov said Russia is looking to hasten its pace in southern Ukraine where it has made slow, incremental gains and establish a landbridge that connects western Russia with the Kremlin-backed breakaway region in Moldova known as Transnistria.

Russia has been ramping up the intensity of its invasion and has focused its efforts on claiming complete control over eastern and southern Ukraine. 

Though the war has largely been fought with heavy artillery a ground offensive has been launched in the Luhansk region where Russian forces are attempting to gain control.

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The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense warned Thursday that it believes Russia is attempting to encircle and capture all resistance forces fighting in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine with the goal of connecting western Russia to Crimea – which it has occupied since 2014. 

If Russian forces are able to gain control over Luhansk, they would more easily be able to push west into Donetsk along with other regions in Ukraine.

The U.S. and NATO have been arming Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Russia has been able to gain control over 20 percent of the country. 

Officials have repeatedly warned Russia could make another attempt to take the capital city of Kyiv and therefore full control over Ukraine. 

Gromov warned that Russia will increasingly target warehouse, storage facilities and logistics routes in an attempt to disrupt the supply of Western arms for Ukraine.