UKRAINE: ‘FAST-TRACK’ TALKS UNDER WAY FOR MORE AID

Long-range missiles, military aircraft on table, official says

Ukraine and its Western allies are engaged in “fasttrack” talks on the possibility of equipping the invaded country with long-range missiles and military aircraft, a top Ukrainian presidential aide said Saturday.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukraine’s supporters in the West “understand how the war is developing” and the need to supply planes capable of providing cover for the armored fighting vehicles that the United States and Germany pledged at the beginning of the month.

However, in remarks to online video channel Freedom, Podolyak said that some of Ukraine’s Western partners maintain a “conservative” attitude to arms deliveries, “due to fear of changes in the international architecture.” Russia and North Korea have accused the West of prolonging and taking a direct role in the war by sending Kyiv increasingly sophisticated weapons.

“We need to work with this. We must show (our partners) the real picture of this war,” Podolyak said, without naming specific countries. “We must speak reasonably and tell them, for example, ‘This and this will reduce fatalities, this will reduce the burden on infrastructure. This will reduce security threats to the European continent, this will keep the war localized.’ And we are doing it.”

The U.S. and Germany agreed Wednesday to share advanced tanks with Ukraine along with the Bradley and Marder vehicles promised earlier, a decision that led to criticism not only from the Kremlin but from the prime minister of NATO and European Union member Hungary.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban asserted Friday that Western countries providing weapons and money to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia have “drifted” into becoming active participants in the conflict. Orban has refused to send weapons to neighboring Ukraine and sought to block EU funds earmarked for military aid.

Western weapons have proven essential to Ukraine’s defense while stoking everhigher tensions with Moscow. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that Ukrainian forces used U.s.-made HIMARS rockets to strike a hospital in the eastern Ukrainian town of Novoaidar, killing 14 people.

Novoaidar is in Luhansk province, which is almost entirely under the control of Russian forces or Russianbacked separatists.

The Russian Defense Ministry alleged the hospital was deliberately targeted. Its claim of a strike in Novoaidar could not be immediately verified.

Amid the news of the Western pledges of heavy tanks, Russia bombarded Ukraine with missiles, exploding drones and artillery shells this week. The attacks continued Saturday, when Russian missiles hit a residential area in the city of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, damaging apartment buildings and killing at least three civilians.