Hello and welcome to The Telegraph’s daily live blog on the war in Ukraine. Follow along as we bring you all of the latest developments throughout the day.
First up this morning:
Ukraine ‘will be forced to retreat without US aid’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his troops will be forced to retreat if the promised US aid package held up in congress is not delivered.
“If there is no US support, it means that we have no air defence, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-milimetre artillery rounds,” Mr Zelensky told the Washington Post.
“It means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps,” he said. “We are trying to find some way not to retreat.”
Shortages of munitions, he said, meant “you have to do with less. How? Of course, to go back. Make the front line shorter. If it breaks, the Russians could go to the big cities.”
Ukrainian troops have been forced onto a defensive footing over the past few months as it struggles with ammunition shortages amid delays to the $60 billion aid package from Washington.
Mr Zelensky said Ukraine was making up for shortages of missiles with home-produced weaponry and air defence systems, “but it is not enough” as it weathers a surge in Russian attacks on energy and other critical infrastructure.
The Telegraph revealed that there has also been a surge in demand for decoy weapons among Ukrainian troops to make up for the shortfall of real weapons.
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