For all the Western media reports about Vladimir Putin’s mounting setbacks in Ukraine — from fallen generals and disarray in the upper echelons of military planning to thousands of troops killed in action — Russia retains plenty of firepower and, tragically, is not hesitating to wield it. 

In a speech to Ukrainian university students yesterday in which he called the “final stage” of the war “the most difficult, the bloodiest,” President Zelensky also said that there can be no feeling that war has ended “until the missiles don’t fly.” They flew again overnight, killing several people in the Chernihiv region after the village of Desna was struck, Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly video address to the nation. 

The president called the Russian strikes “a deliberate and criminal attempt to kill as many Ukrainians as possible.” According to the Telegraph, rescuers were scouring through rubble where dead bodies had been pulled from the destruction. While the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, is largely calm and many Western embassies have reopened, Chernihiv lies east of the Dnieper River just north of Kyiv. 

If Russia’s renewed assault on areas close to the capital are cause for concern, it does not mean the Kremlin intends to loosen its grip on the contested Donbas region to the east. 

“In Donbas, the occupiers are trying to increase pressure,” Mr. Zelensky said in the same address. “There’s hell, and that’s not an exaggeration,” he said, speaking of “the brutal and absolutely pointless bombing of Severodonetsk.” A Russian assault on that town in the Luhansk region of the Donbas left 12 dead and dozens wounded in a single day. 

A correspondent for French newspaper Le Monde, Emmanuel Grynszpan, tweeted that apartment buildings were targeted and put the number of wounded at 40. 

Russia is not likely to wind down operations in Donbas anytime soon. In fact, following the fall of Mariupol, where the Telegraph reported as many as 1,700 Ukrainian soldiers have surrendered from the Azovstal steel plant since Monday, it seems to be doubling down. The Ukrainian armed forces wrote in a Facebook post that “in the Kurakhove direction, Russian invaders massively launched artillery strikes on civil infrastructure facilities, namely with multiple launch rocket systems.” It added that “the enemy conducted the offensive on Novomykhailivka and Oleksandrivka but failed.”

The post listed other areas in the region where as of Friday battles were raging, noting that “in the Novopavlivka and Zaporizhzhia directions, Russian invaders hit infrastructure facilities and civilian households with mortar, rocket and cannon artillery systems, and conducted counterbattery activities.”

Reinforcement of Russian troops in Donbas will be a priority once the Kremlin definitively clamps the lid on Mariupol. In a statement this morning, the British ministry of defense said that “Russian commanders are under pressure to demonstrably achieve operational objectives. This means that Russia will probably redistribute their forces swiftly without adequate preparation, which risks further force attrition.” Judging by Mr. Zelensky’s grim assessment of the latest attack on Severodonetsk, which handed no victory to Mr. Putin, the war of attrition in the east is intensifying with each passing day. 

American sea-skimming Harpoon and Naval Strike Missiles may soon be sent to Ukraine to help sink Russian war vessels in the Black Sea that are currently blockading the port of Odessa, stymieing grain shipments. The Telegraph reported that the anti-ship missiles could be sent either directly or by European allies already equipped with them. The deputy governor of the vital Black Sea port city, Ala Stoyanova, said Vladimir’s Putin’s blockade “means he is blackmailing the world.” 

Those sentiments were echoed by Secretary of State Blinken, who said: “The food supply for millions of Ukrainians, and millions more around the world, has quite literally been held hostage by the Russian military.” While the United Nations has urged Russia to end the blockade, the world saw what kind of opinion Mr. Putin holds of the global peace-making body when its secretary-general, António Guterres, had to dodge a Russian rocket attack during his visit to Kyiv last month. 

As leaders in London and Washington have noted, effective weapons tend to speak much louder than well-crafted platitudes these days.

A top Ukrainian advisor to Mr. Zelensky put it well: “Weaponry is the best diplomat and interpreter into language understood by Russia,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in a tweet that also expressed gratitude to the Senate for voting to allocate $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. “We are grateful to the senators and the American people for their support and huge contribution to restoring world security,” Mr. Podolyak added.