Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blasted the West for lacking unity on Wednesday, as the Russian invasion entered its fourth month and Moscow’s troops advanced in eastern Ukraine. Fighting reached the edge of the industrial city of Severodonetsk, which is under fierce bombardment by Russian forces who are trying to encircle it in one of their key goals in Ukraine’s Donbas region. An unrepentant Moscow told the West to lift sanctions to stave off a global food crisis sparked by the war between two countries that together produce nearly a third of the world’s wheat. Zelensky renewed calls for heavy weapons from foreign partners, saying the billions of dollars’ worth already put up were not enough to help Ukraine’s outgunned forces. “Unity is about weapons. My question is, is there this unity in practice? I can’t see it. Our huge advantage over Russia would be when we are truly united,” Zelensky said via videolink to an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Zelensky said Ukraine was grateful for US support, but urged Europe to step up, specifically naming neighbouring Hungary which is blocking an EU-wide embargo on Russian oil. The Ukrainian president said hours earlier in his daily address to the nation that Russian forces “want to destroy everything” in eastern Ukraine. Western funds and weapons have helped Ukraine hold off its neighbour’s advances in many areas, including the capital Kyiv. Russia is now focused on expanding its gains in eastern Donbas, home to pro-Russian separatists, as well as the southern coast. The governor of the eastern region of Lugansk, Sergiy Gaiday, said fighting had reached the “outskirts” of Severodonetsk, which was being hammered by air strikes, rockets, artillery and mortars. “Russian troops have advanced far enough that they can already fire mortars,” Gaiday said in a statement on social media, adding that, “yesterday there was already fighting on the outskirts of the city.” “The Russian army has decided to completely destroy Severodonetsk. They are simply erasing Severodonetsk from the face of the earth,” the governor said in a separate video on Telegram. “I think that the next week will be decisive.” In the town of Soledar, Ukraine’s salt manufacturing hub, the ground shook moments after Natalia Timofeyenko climbed out of her bunker to reassure herself that she was not alone. “I go outside just to see people. I know that there is shelling out there but I go,” the 47-year-old said after a thundering blast smashed apart a chunk of a mammoth salt mine where she worked with most of her friends and neighbours. Ghostly frontline towns like Soledar are being hammered by Russian artillery as they sit along the crucial road that leads out of besieged Severodonetsk and its sister city Lysychansk. Twelve people were killed by “extremely heavy shelling and attacks” in the neighbouring region of Donetsk, which also forms part of Donbas, the Ukrainian presidency said.