A Ukrainian soldier looks at a drone screen showing Russian troop positions during heavy fighting at the front line in Severodonetsk, in eastern Ukraine.(Oleksandr Ratushniak / Associated Press)

BY DAVID KEYTON AND YURAS KARMANAU

ASSOCIATED PRESS

JUNE 10, 2022 5:59 AM PT

KYIV, Ukraine — Up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed every day in Russia’s military onslaught, according to a presidential advisor — and only more and more advanced Western weaponry will turn back the Russian offensive, reduce the casualties and force Moscow to the negotiating table.Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told the BBC in an interview aired Thursday that the daily loss of 100 to 200 soldiers was the result of a “complete lack of parity” between Ukraine and Russia, which has “thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front” in its bid to advance in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and beyond.Zelensky had recently put the daily death toll at up to 100, but Podolyak said it had grown. Ukrainian officials have pointed at the mounting losses to add to the urgency of their demand for more Western weapons, which have been critical to the country’s unexpected success in holding off the larger and better-equipped Russian forces.After a bungled attempt to overrun the capital, Kyiv, in the early days of the war, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas region of coal mines and factories in the east. But its progress there has been plodding.Podolyak renewed his government’s appeal for the West to supply Ukraine with many more multiple-rocket launcher systems. He addressed Western fears of rocket launchers being used to strike targets inside Russia and potentially escalating the conflict to a wider conflagration, saying that “it won’t happen.”

The slog in the Donbas continued Friday, with a regional governor saying forces are fighting “for every house and every street” in Severodonetsk, the recent focus of clashes.