KYIV: Global economic powers pledged to beef up Kyiv’s military capabilities with a focus on air defence, as Russian missiles, artillery and drones hammered targets in Ukraine with no end in sight to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two.
The Group of Seven promised to “meet Ukraine’s urgent requirements” after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed for modern tanks, artillery and long-range weapons to counter Russia’s devastating invasion.
Zelenskiy also urged G7 leaders gathered at a virtual meeting to support his idea of convening a special Global Peace Summit dedicated to bringing peace to his country.
The summit would be focused on the implementation of Kyiv’s 10-point peace plan that insists on, among other things, Russia’s withdrawal of all its troops from Ukraine and no territorial concessions on Kyiv’s part.
British Defence Minister Ben Wallace said on Monday he would be “open minded” about supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles to target launch sites for Russian drones that have hit infrastructure if Russia carried on targeting civilian areas.
US President Joe Biden told Zelenskiy on Sunday that Washington’s priority was to boost Ukraine’s air defences. The United States also shipped the first batch of power equipment to Ukraine under an aid package agreed last month.
Russia is “deliberately trying to freeze Ukrainians to death as we enter winter”, a senior US official said. “Our strategy right now first is to help Ukraine protect itself against this deliberate attacks on civilian energy infrastructure because it could be a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Moscow has denied targeting civilians but the war has displaced millions and killed thousands of non-combatants.
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said “unliveable conditions” were likely to send another wave of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees into Europe over the winter.
In the latest fighting, Russian artillery hammered nearly 20 settlements around the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut, and there was “massive shelling” of the southern city Kherson which was liberated by Ukrainian forces last month, Ukrainian military and civilian officials said on Monday.
Zelenskiy also appealed to G7 leaders to help Ukraine obtain an extra 2 billion cubic metres of natural gas in light of dire energy shortages as millions languish without power in subzero cold.
Sergey Kovalenko, the head of YASNO, which provides electricity to Kyiv, said on his Facebook page that the limitation to power consumption in the capital remained significant.
Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa on Monday resumed operations suspended after Russia used Iranian-made drones to hit two energy plants two days earlier. Power is slowly being restored to some 1.5 million people, grid operator Ukrenergo said.
Separately, European Union foreign ministers agreed to put 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) more into a fund that has been used to pay for military support for Ukraine, after it was largely depleted. More money may be added in the future. – Agencies
