The Ukrainian military is fighting hard, but the growing "humanitarian catastrophe" in the nation's cities is a "real genocide" that points to the need for help fighting Russia in the skies as well as on the ground, Alexey Goncharenko, a member of Ukraine's Parliament, said on Newsmax Friday.
"We will not lose," Goncharenko insisted to Newsmax's "Wake Up America" during an interview from his office in Kyiv. "There is fighting, 20 kilometers from the border of the city, in satellite towns. Russians try to encircle Kyiv, but they don't have any successes. Our army is holding the ground, and they have very big losses, I mean the Russian forces."
He added that the situation is dire for civilians in Ukraine's cities, where people have been without water, heat, or electricity for 10-12 days, and are coming under Russian fire when they are trying to evacuate.
"The occupants are just shooting at civilians," said Goncharenko.
Ukraine's territorial defense is ready to defend Kyiv, he insisted, so Russia has "no chances" to take the capital city.
But the humanitarian situation is "awful" in the surrounding cities.
"First of all, in Mariupol, which is a big city, a half-million people in the south and eastern part of Ukraine, is blocked now by Russians and people are trapped there," said Goncharenko. "The Russians, they're using civilians like hostages. They do not allow people to leave, and they're bombing civilian residences and even maternity hospitals, children's hospitals."
And, he said, "that's why we're so desperately in need of help by the West to fight with the Russians in the air. On the land, we're holding the ground but in the air they are dominating and they're using aircraft and missiles to attack."
He added that he can't understand why Ukraine can't get Poland's fighter jets, or why NATO can send Stinger and Javelin missiles that can take out tanks but not aircraft.
"That's the same weapons and it's something even for humanitarian reasons, because they are bombing from the air, just civilians," Goncharenko said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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