Meeting with allies, Zelenskyy presses for more weapons

KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine appealed directly Friday to Western military leaders for faster weapons deliveries on the heels of a flurry of major Russian missile strikes.

Better defense against such strikes and the ability to hit back at targets in Russia would help Ukraine put military pressure on Moscow “so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” Zelenskyy said. He lamented that prohibitions on firing long-range, Western-provided missiles and rockets into Russia persisted.

Zelenskyy spoke at a conference in Germany on weapons donations and, later in the day, at a forum in Italy on Europe’s future as he pursues what he calls a policy of combining military pressure and diplomacy to seek an end to the war. Zelenskyy also said that not all air defense systems pledged by Ukraine’s allies had arrived in the country.

In opening remarks in Germany, Zelenskyy outlined what he described as gains a month into the incursion, seizing 500 square miles of Russian territory even as Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, threatening to capture the strategic hub of Pokrovsk. At the same time, Zelenskyy said, the Ukrainian army has killed or wounded about 6,000 Russian soldiers on Russian soil in the past month. The assertion could not be independently verified.

The meetings followed a grim, nearly two-week wave of Russian missile bombardments inside Ukraine, which some military analysts view as at least in part a riposte to the ground invasion.

Zelenskyy called for expanding deliveries of F-16 fighter jets, the first of which arrived last month and were used initially to shoot down incoming cruise missiles and exploding drones.

Speaking Friday evening in Cernobbio, Italy, at the Ambrosetti Forum on Europe’s future, Zelenskyy again pleaded for “air defenses to defend ourselves.” He said Ukraine would not use any longer-range missiles against civilian targets.

The month-old ground attack into the Kursk region of southwestern Russia, Zelenskyy said earlier, has served to highlight Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic goal of seizing Ukrainian land rather than defending Russia’s. Russia has not diverted forces from an offensive in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to defend in Kursk.

On Thursday, Putin reaffirmed that his army would focus on advancing in eastern Ukraine, calling it his “first-priority goal,” while calling Ukraine’s push into Russia a mistake that “weakened” it.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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