For weeks, Ukrainian officials have pleaded for powerful western weapons as a way to stave off battlefield defeats.

A senior adviser to President Zelensky shifted this messaging on weapons on Monday by laying out for the first time the total number of howitzers, rocket launchers and tanks Ukraine thinks it would need to win the war against Russia.

At the same time, the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, accused western leaders of being reluctant to seriously address Ukraine’s gigantic disadvantage in long-range weaponry, and the scale of what will be needed to even the odds. He suggested that western nations lacked a sense of urgency even as Ukraine’s army, taking heavy casualties, is being battered in the east.

And he suggested that some western European countries, including France and Germany, were “hiding from the war”.

“If you think we should lose, just tell us directly: ‘We want you to lose.’ Then we will understand why you give us weapons at this level,” Podolyak said in an interview.

The US and its allies have provided about 100 howitzers and several dozen self-propelled artillery guns.

(New York Times News Service)