Fighting rages as Ukraine’s leader pleads for artillery

Bloomberg

Russia continued its assault on Sievierodonetsk, pushing Ukrainian troops out of the center of Kyiv’s last major foothold in the Luhansk region. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the fighting “very fierce” and his top military commander pleaded for the US to send more artillery.
Moscow’s use of cluster munitions and indiscriminate shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, constitutes a war crime, Amnesty International said in a report.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said it would be “unthinkable” for Nato not to defend membership hopeful Sweden if that country is attacked. The war remains the biggest single worry among people around the world, according to a poll conducted by Kantar.
Stoltenberg, secretary general of Nato, said Sweden has already received security assurances from several members of the military alliance as it seeks to join the group.
He told reporters after meeting Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson that Nato has also stepped up with more exercises and more
military presence. “And that makes a difference, meaning that if Sweden was attacked, then I deem it as unthinkable that Nato allies would not react,” Stoltenberg said.
The Nato chief welcomed “clear messages, signals” from Sweden to address Turkish concerns about the country’s application. Andersson said that on arms exports, “as a member of Nato, the independent agency we have might view these decisions differently.” She added: “We take the Turkish concerns very seriously, not least their security concerns when it comes to terrorism.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains people’s biggest concern in every one of the 19 countries surveyed, closely
followed by economic worries and the cost-of-living crisis,
according the Kantar Global
Issues Barometer, which included 11,000 respondents.
While Covid-19 is no longer seen as a pressing concern, 64% of people globally listed the war as a top worry, followed by 39% who mentioned economic issues. The level correlated with proximity, with 94% of Poles independently offering that they are anxious about the war, compared with 80% of Spanish, German and French, Kantar said.
The war will cut Ukraine’s grain harvest to as low as 48 million tons, from 84 million tons a year ago, as the country has lost about a quarter of
its farming area, Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said.
The war prevented sowing and harvesting that could have increased the expected grain crop by at least 20 million tons, he said.