Ukraine is seeking more help from the West, pleading for faster deliveries of weapons to hold off better-armed Russian forces and for humanitarian support combating deadly diseases.
Russian-allied Luhansk People's Republic soldiers prepare weapons, in Severodonetsk, Ukraine, on 29 May. Photo: AFP/ Russian State-owned agency Sputnik
In Severodonetsk, the small city that has become the focus of Russia's advance in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war well into its fourth month, further heavy fighting was reported.
To the south, the mayor of Mariupol - a city reduced to ruins by a Russian siege, said sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.
"There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera ... The war which took over 20,000 residents ... unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, will claim thousands more Mariupolites," he told national television.
He called on the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross to work on establishing a humanitarian corridor to allow remaining residents to leave the city, which was under Russian control.
In a snapshot of the war's wider impact, the UN's food agency said reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia could inflict chronic hunger on up to 19 million more people globally over the next year.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Ukraine to be incorporated as a part of the West, with binding guarantees for its protection.
Asking the EU to accept Ukraine as a membership candidate, he told a conference in Copenhagen by videolink: "The European Union can take a historic step that will prove that words about the people of Ukraine belonging to the European family are not just words."
The war in the east, where Russia has focused its attentions, was now primarily an artillery battle in which the Ukrainian forces were severely outgunned, Ukrainian officials said.
That meant the tide of events could be turned only if the West fulfilled promises to send more and better weaponry, including rocket systems that Washington and others had promised.
'Artillery war'
Ukraine's head of military intelligence Vadym Skibitsky told Britain's Guardian newspaper: "This is an artillery war now".
"Everything now depends on what (the West) gives us. Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces."
Germany had been one of the largest suppliers of weapons since Russia invaded, but has been criticised for its slowness in supplying the heavy weaponry Kyiv said it needed. German authorities planned to revise the country's rules on arms exports to make it easier to arm democracies like Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on Friday.
Russia hoped to capture the full territory of eastern Luhansk province, which it demanded Ukraine cede to separatists, along with neighbouring Donetsk - an area known as the Donbas, where it had backed a revolt by separatist proxies since 2014.
To that end, the Kremlin had concentrated its forces into a battle for Severodonetsk.
Ukrainian troops had largely pulled out of the city's residential areas but had not yielded their foothold on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets River. Russian forces were also pushing from the north and south to try to encircle the Ukrainians, but so far had made limited progress.
Both sides said they had inflicted mass casualties. Battlefield reports could not immediately be verified by Reuters.
In his nightly address, Zelensky said Russia was trying to "break every town in the Donbas."
"Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Sloviansk, many, many others ... All these ruins were once happy towns," he said.
Ivan Sosnin,19, walks in a ruined property in Lysychansk city, in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, on 7 June. Photo:
Britain on Friday condemned Russian proxy authorities in Donbas for what it called an "egregious breach" of the Geneva convention in sentencing to death two British nationals captured in the separatist region while fighting for Ukraine.
A UN official said trials conducted under such circumstances were tantamount to war crimes, while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced it as a "sham trial against prisoners of war".
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he termed his "special military operation" in Ukraine in February, and said his aim was to disarm and "denazify" Russia's neighbour. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.
Ukraine said a speech delivered on Thursday by Putin - who drew a parallel between what he portrayed as a new quest to win back Russian lands and the historic achievements of Tsar Peter the Great - proved that Moscow's aim was conquest.
"Putin's confession of land seizures and comparing himself with Peter the Great prove: there was no 'conflict', only the country's bloody seizure under contrived pretexts of people's genocide," tweeted Zelensky aide Mykhailo Podolyak.
NATO member Estonia summoned Russia's ambassador there to condemn Putin's "completely unacceptable" praise for the 18th century Russian ruler who captured a city, Narva, that is now Estonian.
-Reuters