A senior Ukrainian official said that between 100 and 200 of his country's troops were being killed per day on the front line in the war against Russia, the BBC reported on Friday, 10 June.
Presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said that Ukraine urgently needed Western assistance to push back heavily armed Russian troops in the east.
"The Russian forces have thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front and that includes heavy artillery, multiple rocket launch systems and aviation," he was quoted as saying by the BBC.
"Our demands for artillery are not just some kind of whim... but an objective need when it comes to the situation on the battlefield," he added.
Meanwhile, Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence, also highlighted the urgent need for heavier weapons.
"Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us," he was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
"Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces. Our western partners have given us about 10% of what they have," he added.
On the other hand, Ukraine's Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said that the Russian military was also witnessing a high number of casualties in the war in the east.
"The Kremlin continues to press by sheer mass, stumbles, faces strong rebuffs and suffers huge casualties," Reznikov said. "But yet, still has forces to advance in some parts of the front."
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