Ukraine continues appeal for military assistance as Senator Amy Klobuchar shows support

Ukrainian forces are now launching a counter-offensive in the Kherson region, near the Black Sea.

The fighting against Russia is now in its seventh month.  

“I think the Ukrainians are launching a brave battle against the Russians,” says Stephen Vitvitsky of Minneapolis. “There are multiple fronts they’re fighting across. The totality of the front line would be pretty much the length of Japan.”

Vitvitsky — a member of the group “Stand With Ukraine Minnesota” — has a close family connection to the war.

Each week, he makes a video conference call to his second cousin Mykhailo Pavliuk, a council member and a father of three in the western city of Chernivtsi.

“I think Ukrainians as a whole have suffered quite a lot,” Vitvitsky declares. “For even those not on the front lines, the war has been traumatic. Folks in western Ukraine are subject to almost nightly air raid sirens, so if you have kids as my cousin does, that means rounding up your family, running to the basement in the middle of the night, sometimes multiple times.”

As the war grinds on, Vitvitsky says Ukrainian troops continue to fight back.

That effort, backed up with the help of $13-billion in military aid from the United States.

“They’ve been able to disrupt the Russian offenses in the Donbas and where they’re doing the counter-offensive,” Vitvitsky notes. “So I think these weapons are incredibly important. I think it’s incredibly important the U.S. provide them.”

ABC News says those weapons include surveillance drones, mine-resistant vehicles, and 2,000 anti-armor rounds and howitzer weapons.

Among the key pieces of weaponry are HIMARS, short for High Intensity Mobile Artillery Rocket Systems.

“American weapons have performed,” says Senator Amy Klobuchar, (D-Minnesota). “These are the high intensity missile rockets. They have 16 of them.”

Klobuchar spoke with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS at the Minnesota State Fair, after returning from a trip to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

She and Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) visited with Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Tuesday, as a show of bipartisan support.

The other purpose of the trip was to hear from the Ukrainian president about the status of fighting against Russian forces.

“We are over time matching (Ukraine’s) operational plans with our weapons, you can see the difference,” Klobuchar says. “Meanwhile, the Russian forces, it’s such a bigger country, but they are demoralized. They’ve lost from 90,000 to 100,000.”

As the war continues, so-called normal life goes on.

Some Ukrainian children are returning back to school.

But Vitvitsky says others cannot.   

“Some kids have to go to remote learning even though they’re not in an occupied area because their school doesn’t have a bomb shelter,” he notes.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian-Americans in Minnesota are encouraging the U.S. to continue economic, humanitarian, and military support — including the delivery of weapons.

“I think Putin only understands the power,” says Maria Doan, a member of the Minnesota Ukrainian-American Advocacy Committee. “So the best tool of negotiation is to buy more weapons for Ukrainians, because that’s the only way to deter him.”

The committee meets with political leaders, lobbying for continued support of Ukraine in the war.

Doan says the group hopes at some point the United States will provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

President Biden has so far opposed that step, saying it could lead to a military showdown with Russia.

Doan adds the committee is advocating for Russia to be designated as a state sponsor of terror.

However, she says she understands why the west is reluctant to do so.

“This is truly a genocidal war,” Doan declares. “There are still people in Russian prisons, and it would be extremely challenging to negotiate the process of the release if diplomatic relations are broken completely.”

She says she believes the fighting in Ukraine will be a prolonged conflict — possibly years.

But Doan states the assistance of the U.S. and its western allies will be crucial in determining the outcome of the war.

She says Ukrainians have little choice but to keep fighting.

“The alternative to Ukrainians is complete and utter obliteration,” Doan says. “There is no other way. We either completely abandon our Ukrainian identity and become part of Russia — and then, who knows what is going to happen next? So Ukrainians don’t have any other choice than to continue fighting and liberating our country.”