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Horrific images from a Russian missile strike on a railway station at Kramatorsk that was crowded with fleeing women and children are a reminder that the war in Ukraine is very far from

over. The reason why these refugees were gathered in their thousands and hence vulnerable to attack is that the front line in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk is moving steadily closer

to their homes and escape routes are cut. As the Russians step up their offensive across the entire Donbas region, some 700,000 civilians remain trapped there. Elsewhere, the mayor of Dnpro,

a major city in the heart of Ukraine, has warned his one million citizens to leave now. The fate that awaits them at the hands of the invaders is plain from a message painted on the casing

of the Tochka-U ballistic missile that killed at least 35 and maimed 100 civilians of all ages. In Russian, it read: “For the children.” President Zelensky commented: “The Battle of Kyiv is

over; the Battle of Donbas is only just beginning.” Speaking in Brussels, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba appealed for “weapons, weapons, weapons”. After the mauling they

suffered in the failed assault on the Ukrainian capital, the Russians are regrouping and rushing in reinforcements for an even larger-scale, multi-pronged  offensive in Donbas. The terrain

and conditions there are likely to be more favourable for the aggressors than in the north; they are also aided by pro-Russian separatists. The stakes are just as high in Donbas as in Kyiv,

because Ukraine could find its best forces enveloped and destroyed there, opening the way for Russia to seize its second city, Kharkiv, and the country’s entire coastline. If Odessa were to

fall, Ukraine would lose one of the world’s most beautiful seaside resorts and its major entrepôt. Without the Donbas and access to the Black Sea, Ukraine would be a landlocked rump. It

would also be certain to face a new attack on the capital from the south. As Oleksandr Gruzevich, the deputy commander of the Ukrainian army, put it: “It is likely the enemy has not given up

the goal of a second attack on Kyiv — there is such a threat.” All this explains why there is a flurry of diplomatic activity in the West. As Boris Johnson and Olaf Scholz meet in Downing

Street, the Prime Minister will echo the Ukrainian appeal to the Germans to “do more”. The British are promising for the first time to send armoured vehicles to Ukraine, along with other

weaponry. Joe Biden has stepped up his military aid to $1.7 billion. The EU’s top officials, the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the High Representative Josep Borrell, are in

Kyiv today to listen to President Zelensky and see the destruction for themselves. Yet as Kuleba says, the worst is yet to come: “The battle for Donbas will remind you of the Second World

War, with large operations, manoeuvres, the involvement of thousands of tanks, armoured vehicles, planes, artillery,” he told journalists at NATO headquarters. “Russia has its plan, we have

ours — and the outcome will be decided on the battlefield.” Kuleba rejects the distinction between defensive and offensive weapons — like the British but unlike the US and other Western

allies. To fight a pitched battle against the assembled might of the Russian army, one of the largest in the world, needs as variegated an arsenal as possible. The Ukrainians are likely to

face fresher and better-equipped units plucked from the entire Russian Federation, backed up by Wagner Group mercenaries to terrorise the population. The results of this war of annihilation

are already becoming apparent in the atrocities of Bucha and now also coming to light in Borodyanka: Ukrainians know the Russians will give no quarter. This is the moment for the West to

move heaven and earth to help Ukraine. Aid is indeed flooding in from every corner of the globe. A more positive attitude from the West would not come amiss, though. As the US defence expert

Eliot A. Cohen told the Pentagon: “And stop saying what you won’t do.” The legend on the side of the Australian Bushmaster armoured personnel carriers now arriving in the country speaks

volumes: “United with Ukraine.” Much more kit from the arsenal of democracy is needed, however, if the Battle of Donbas is to be won. Ukraine needs armour (only the Czechs have so far

obliged), artillery, multiple rocket launchers — and ammunition. The latter above all. Have we forgotten Zelensky’s quip when the US offered to fly him out of Kyiv? “I need ammunition, not a

ride.” Give Zelensky the tools and he will finish the job. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution

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