By Athena Papakosta

The war in Ukraine is just a few days into its second year, and for now its end is not even in sight. Kiev is pushing for fighter jets, the West is not promising, and Moscow continues to besiege Donetsk with the aim of Mahmut.

On Tuesday Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, from NATO headquarters in Brussels when asked by reporters what Ukraine wants from Western allies responded by showing a photo of a fighter jet.

This request of Ukraine has been on the table for weeks. Already the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is strongly pushing the West to say yes and give the long-awaited green light for the fighter jets for Kiev.

The stubborn resistance of Ukrainians and the reinforcement of Ukrainian forces with weapons from the West has helped Kiev continue to put the brakes on the Kremlin’s ambitions to conquer Donbass. But the danger remains. Moscow is currently pushing into the Donbass and strengthening its lines in the Ukrainian south.

The war may have remained frozen over the winter but (and) Ukrainian forces are reporting that Russia is preparing for a massive new offensive as we head into spring. For his part, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg judges that “we are already seeing the beginning” of this attack underlining the need to “supply Ukraine with more weapons”.

The American Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, emphasized that the issue of sending F-16 remains open but, as he characteristically pointed out, “I have no relevant announcements to make.”

Another issue that preoccupies the West in addition is the supply of Ukraine, steadily, with ammunition but without emptying their own warehouses of stocks. For Stoltenberg, Kiev is consuming them much faster than its Western allies can supply it. At the same time, however, the Ukrainians are estimated to be firing up to 6,000-7,000 artillery shells per day, which is almost a third of the artillery shells fired by Moscow.

At the moment, the British Ministry of Defense considers that Russia does not currently have the necessary resources for a major attack, but, at the same time, it is trying to strengthen its lines. On the eastern front the situation remains “extremely difficult” according to the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky himself, who, as he characteristically underlined, is a battle “literally for every inch of Ukrainian land”.