Brace for Russia’s war against Ukraine to last ‘years’, warns Nato chief

The head of Nato has warned that the world must be prepared for the war in Ukraine to last “years”, as Russian sought to bring the frontline to Ukraine’s second city.

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, reiterated the alliance’s pledge to supply Ukraine with advanced weaponry to help ward off a Russian offensive in the east, but warned against expecting a quick victory.

“We must prepare for the fact that it could take years,” he said in an interview with Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“We must not let up in supporting Ukraine. Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices.”

In Ukraine, an interior ministry official warned on Sunday that Russian forces were trying to approach Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, to “turn it into a new frontline town”.

Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said on Ukrainian television that the Russians are trying to get as close as possible “to be able to shell the city”.

Kharkiv faced heavy shelling in the first two months of the war, as Russian forces advanced to its suburbs. But the Russians have since retreated and moderate Ukrainian gains allowed them to push the Russians out of artillery range from Kharkiv.

The city, which is close to the Russian border, came under attack on Sunday, with Russia’s defence ministry claiming to have fired Iskander ballistic missiles, which destroyed Western weapons supplies recently brought to the city.

Near Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro, a Russian missile hit a fuel depot, causing a fire that killed two people and injured more than a dozen, according to the Dnipro governor.

The fire raged throughout Sunday after the night-time attack.

In the country’s east, fighting has recently focused on the city of Severodonetsk, which has been pummelled by Russian artillery almost as hard as Mariupol.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington DC, said in their daily report late on Saturday that a Russian offensive outside Severodonetsk has largely stalled. However, they said the town is still bound to fall, as Ukraine is massively outgunned by Russian artillery.

“Russian forces will likely be able to seize Severodonetsk in the coming weeks,” it said, adding that Russia had concentrated “most of its available forces in this small area”.

In Severodonetsk’s twin city of Lysychansk, just across the river, the bodies of two civilians killed by Russian shelling had been found, said Serhiy Gaiday, the local governor.

Meanwhile, more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered Mariupol’s last pocket of resistance at the Azovstal plant last month remain in Russian captivity, even though the Ukrainian government insisted there was a swap deal in the works.

On Sunday, an unnamed Russian official told the Russian Tass news agency that several prominent commanders of the Azov battalion, including Denys Prokopenko, have been removed from the separatist-held east. They have been taken to Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, where they are likely to face gruelling interrogations.

Lefortovo is informally run by the FSB intelligence agency. Inmates there often face inhumane treatment and psychological pressure.