Duwa Lashi La, acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), told a media conference this week that at least 2,000 pro-democracy fighters have been killed in Myanmar battling the military junta that seized power last year, calling on allies to provide military aid.

Duwa Lashi La was speaking to the Reuters NEXT conference on Thursday from an undisclosed location in Myanmar.

“We regard (the deaths) as the price we must pay,” said Duwa Lashi La, a former teacher and lawyer in his seventies who fled his home in Kachin State.

Duwa Lashi La has been pictured visiting troops, who include former students and professionals driven to the jungles by military crackdowns, clad in a flak jacket and helmet, Reuters reports. The junta consider him a terrorist.

Duwa Lashi La said the opposition fighters had killed about 20,000 junta troops, although it is not possible to independently confirm the numbers.

“If we had anti-aircraft weapons, safe to say that we could win in six months,” he said. “If only we received the same support that Ukraine receives from the US and EU, the sufferings of the people who are being slaughtered would cease at once.”

Duwa Lashi La told the Reuters conference that the door was not closed to negotiation but the military had to stop killing civilians, vow to withdraw from politics and abolish the constitution that enshrines their power.