Ukrainian troops begged the West for more weapons as Russian forces pushed farther into a key Donbas holdout Monday.

Russian forces entered the outskirts of Severodonetsk, the last major city in the Luhansk oblast under Ukrainian control.

The city is key to Russian efforts to complete the capture of the eastern industrial region of the Donbas quickly — before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense.

“Help us with weapons. The most important is anti-aircraft. Close the sky — it’s the civilians who are suffering the most,” Bohdan, a 30-year-old soldier told Stars and Stripes.

“I mainly hope the boys don’t get encircled in Sievierodonetsk,” Bohdan said of his fellow troops. “They need more guns, they need more weapons.”

Weapons from the West already helped Kyiv’s forces thwart a Russian advance on the capital in the early weeks of the war, forcing Moscow to withdraw, regroup and focus on the more limited objective of seizing the Donbas.

“The Kremlin has reckoned that it can’t afford to waste time and should use the last chance to extend the separatist-controlled territory because the arrival of Western weapons in Ukraine could make it impossible,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said.

But in a potential setback, President Biden said Monday that the US will not provide Ukraine with advanced missile systems that can hit targets inside Russia.

The refusal came as Russian forces have entered the northeastern and southeastern portions of the ruined city of Severodonetsk, Luhansk’s regional governor Serhiy Haidai said Monday.

The Luhansk oblast is the northernmost of the two provinces that make up the Donbas region. With the overwhelming majority of the Luhansk oblast now under Russian control, Kremlin forces have focused withering firepower on Severodonetsk in recent days.

“[They] use the same tactics over and over again,” Haidai said of the Russians. “They shell for several hours – for three, four, five hours – in a row and then attack.”

“Those who attack die. Then shelling and attack follow again, and so on until they break through somewhere,” he added.

In an interview, Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said Russian and Ukrainian forces were engaged in street-by-street gun battles.

“The number of victims is rising every hour, but we are unable to count the dead and the wounded amid the street fighting,” he said.

In a video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Severodonetsk’s capture “a fundamental task for the occupiers,” and vowed to defend it.

Severodonetsk had a peacetime population of roughly 100,000 — a number authorities say has now dwindled to fewer than 20,000.

Haidai said there was a “terrible smell of death” on the outskirts of the city, made worse by rising temperatures.

Ukrainian authorities estimate that some 90% of the city’s structures have been damaged by Russian artillery fire.

Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, Russia lobbed artillery at Mykolaiv, an important Ukrainian military port city just northwest of Russian-controlled Kherson, while Ukrainian counterattacks harassed Russian positions in three nearby villages.

With Post wires