‘Give us arms … and we will win’
President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged a NATO summit to flood weapons into Ukraine, with Western allies responding with new sanctions against Russia, promises of military aid, and discussion of expelling Moscow from the international G20 body.
As battles raged across Ukraine, with television footage showing a large Russian warship ablaze at a dockside near the southern city of Mariupol, Mr Zelensky addressed the emergency NATO summit and a G7 leaders’ meeting by video link.
He said the West should provide “all the weapons we need” to “prevent the deaths of Ukrainians from Russian strikes, from Russian occupation”.
Kicking off a day of intense diplomacy, US President Joe Biden made clear that the Western alliance was listening. “NATO has never been more united,” Mr Biden said.
And after Mr Zelensky said there was a “real” chance of Russian President Vladimir Putin resorting to chemical warfare, Mr Biden told reporters “we will respond if he uses it”.
Mr Biden noted that under his presidency the US has pledged $Us2bn in weapons to Ukraine. He announced a new commitment to “more than $Us1bn in humanitarian assistance” as well as promising to welcome 100,000 of the nearly 3.7 million refugees fleeing the country.
After the US also announced new sanctions, including targeting Russian politicians, Mr Biden said the West was in it for the long haul, intent on “increasing the pain” on Moscow.
Mr Biden intensified the effort to ostracise Putin’s Russia with a call to exclude Moscow from the G20.
“That was raised today,” he told reporters, adding that if the G20 nations do not agree, then he would press for Ukraine to be allowed to join.
In his address, Mr Zelensky said Russia was using phosphorus bombs, which cause severe burns, conducting indiscriminate shelling of civilians, and could resort to “full-scale use” of chemical weapons.
Ukraine has already lived through “a month of heroic resistance – a month of the darkest suffering”, he said, adding: “To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance without restrictions.”
On the ground, long-range Russian strikes on the eastern city of Kharkiv killed at least six civilians and wounded more than a dozen others, Ukrainian authorities said.
At least four people including two children were killed in strikes elsewhere in the east, Luhansk governor Sergiy Gayday said, accusing Russian forces of using phosphorus on the village of Rubizhne.
Britain’s ITV network showed footage of the incendiary weapons dropping in a white haze overnight on the commuter town of Irpin near the capital Kyiv. The scale of civilian suffering was underscored when the UN said more than half of the country’s children have been driven from their homes by Russian bombardment.
“Vladimir Putin has already crossed the red line into barbarism,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in Brussels.
Ukrainian forces claimed to be pushing Russian troops back in some areas around Kyiv. They also claimed success in attacking one of the navy vessels used to bring Russian forces in from the Black Sea. Video footage showed a ship in a ball of fire and smoke, with other vessels were sailing away from the inferno.
Mr Zelensky wants NATO to help Ukraine go on the offensive with more advanced fighter jets, missile defence systems, tanks, armoured vehicles and anti-ship missiles.