Ukrainian officials on Friday pleaded for more help from the West including quicker deliveries of weapons to hold off better armed Russian forces at a critical time in the battle in the east.

It is reported that heavy fighting is still observed in Severodonetsk, the small eastern city that has become the focus of Russia’s advance and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war that has increased financial and physical hardship around the world.

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The United Nations’ food agency said that chronic hunger could afflict up to 19 million more people globally over the next year due to reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia.

Ukrainian officials said they were worried about the spread of deadly cholera and dysentery in the southern city of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of civilians live in ruins captured by Russian troops.

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In a speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Ukraine to be accepted as a part of the West with binding guarantees for its protection.

Visiting Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said Germany would help build trauma centres for the wounded, donating prosthetic limbs and deploying doctors, as Ukraine needed “humanitarian aid just as urgently as … our military support.”

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But with the war in the east now primarily an artillery battle in which Kyiv is severely outgunned by Moscow, Ukrainian officials say the tide of events could be turned only if the West fulfils promises to send more and better weaponry including rocket systems that Washington and others have promised.