(CN) — After 47 days of combat, the war in Ukraine is building toward a major battle over the eastern region of Donbas with both sides beefing up their arsenals and armies, leaving little hope that the fighting will end any time soon.
With the West stepping up arms shipments to Kyiv, Ukraine is preparing for a drawn-out war with Russia. A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday told his compatriots to gird themselves for years of war.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer flew to Moscow on Monday and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Nehammer’s foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, said the chancellor was going to tell Putin that he has “de facto lost the war morally,” according to the Guardian.
In a statement after the meeting, Nehammer said he told Putin that those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine would be prosecuted and that Western sanctions will increase as long as the war continues. He said Putin and he had a “direct, open and hard” conversation.
To reporters, Nehammer said he got “no positive impressions and promising prospects,” according to Ukrinform, a Ukrainian state news agency.
“Putin has massively entered into the logic of war and acts accordingly,” Nehammer said.
Nehammer was the first European leader to visit Moscow since Putin launched the Ukraine invasion on Feb. 24. Austria is not part of NATO, making it a neutral nation in the NATO-Russia rivalry.
The Kremlin remains defiant over the war and Putin’s popularity has only grown at home since the invasion, according to Russian opinion polls. It did not immediately issue a statement about Nehammer's visit.
Fighting has continued to be fierce in southern and eastern parts of Ukraine with more reports of shelling on towns and cities in Ukraine and in eastern parts of Ukraine under the control of pro-Russian separatists.
Russian forces have made gains in seizing all of Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine.
On Monday, the 36th marine brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces issued a desperate message on Facebook saying they were surrounded and faced a “last battle.”
The brigade described how it has run out of water, food and ammunition and that many of its members have been killed. Those who can walk continue to fight, it said.
“Today will probably be the last battle, as the ammunition is running out,” it said. “It’s death for some of us, and captivity for the rest.”
On Monday, in a speech to the South Korean parliament, Zelenskyy said “tens of thousands” have been killed in Mariupol.
“The worst situation is in Mariupol,” he said. “Mariupol is destroyed. There are tens of thousands of dead. But even despite this, the Russians do not stop the offensive operation. They want to make Mariupol a demonstratively destroyed city.”
Since Russian forces withdrew from areas around Kyiv, the Russian army has shifted its attention to Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine that has been the theater of war for the past eight years following a pro-Russian separatist movement.
Fighting remains heavy in Donbas with devastating consequences.
On Friday, scores of civilians were killed and wounded after a missile struck a train station in Kramatorsk where thousands of people were waiting to be evacuated. Russia was blamed for the attack, but the Kremlin accused Ukraine of launching the missile, citing as proof that it was the kind of rocket used by Ukraine.
Western support for Ukraine continues to solidify and has only deepened in the past week as evidence of Russian war crimes mounts.
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