Zelenskyy pleads for more weapons
• Russia tightened its grip on a key target in a battle for control of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for more western arms to help Ukraine reach an “inflection point” and prevail in the war.
Zelenskyy told Luxembourg's parliament via videolink on Thursday that Russian forces now occupied about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, with battle lines stretching more than 1,000 km.
As the invasion approaches its 100th day on Friday, Russia says Washington is adding “fuel to the fire” with a new $700 million weapons package for Ukraine that will include advanced rocket systems with a range of up to 80 km.
But separately addressing a forum in Slovakia, Zelenskyy said more weapons supplies would “ensure an inflection point in this confrontation,” in Ukraine's favour.
U.S. President Joe Biden hopes extending Ukraine's artillery reach will help push Moscow to negotiate an end to a war in which thousands have been killed, cities and towns flattened and more than six million people forced to flee the country.
His administration said it had Ukraine's assurances it would not use the rocket systems to hit targets inside Russia.
“Ukraine is fighting an exclusively defensive war, and we always state this,” the country's deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar told a briefing when asked whether Kyiv made such a promise.
While Moscow denies targeting civilians it says it regards Ukrainian infrastructure used to bring in western arms as a legitimate target. Still, it insisted those supplies would not change the course of what it calls a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of ultra-nationalists the Kremlin says threaten Russian security.
“Pumping ( western) weapons into Ukraine does not change all the parameters of the special operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Its goals will be achieved, but this will bring more suffering to Ukraine,” Peskov said when asked whether U. S. plans to sell Ukraine drones that can be armed with missiles could change the nature of the conflict.
Russian forces, backed by heavy artillery, control most of the eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk — now largely in ruins — after days of fierce fighting, Britain's defence ministry said in its daily intelligence report.
Ukraine's armed forces general staff said that besides its assault on the city, Russian troops were also attacking other parts of the east and northeast.
The capture of Sievierodonetsk and its smaller twin Lysychansk would give Russia control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces along with Donetsk in the Donbas claimed by Moscow on behalf of separatists.