Ukraine needs more weapons: Zelenskiy

Russian missile strikes have killed three people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson while fighting raged in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia again shelled the key town of Vuhledar, Ukrainian officials say.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine faced a difficult situation in Donetsk and needed faster weapons supplies and new types of weaponry, just days after allies agreed to provide Kyiv with heavy battle tanks.

“The situation is very tough. Bakhmut, Vuhledar and other sectors in Donetsk region – there are constant Russian attacks,” Zelenskiy said in a video address late on Sunday.

“Russia wants the war to drag on and exhaust our forces. So we have to make time our weapon. We have to speed up events, speed up supplies and open up new weapons options for Ukraine.”

Three people were killed and six injured on Sunday by Russian strikes on Kherson that damaged a hospital and a school, the regional administration said.

Russian troops had occupied Kherson shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and held the city until Ukrainian forces recaptured it in November.

Since its liberation, the city has regularly been shelled from Russian positions across the Dnipro river.

Later on Sunday a missile struck an apartment building in the northeastern town of Kharkiv, killing an elderly woman, regional Governor Oleh Synehubov said.

Russia on Saturday accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately striking a hospital in a Russian-held area of eastern Ukraine, killing 14 people. There was no response to the allegations from Ukraine.

Ukraine’s General Staff said on Monday that Ukrainian defenders had repelled a Russian attack in Bakhmut, the focus of Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, and in several other cities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

A Ukrainian military statement issued on the previous evening had noted intensified fighting in Vuhledar, southwest of Bakhmut, in recent days.

Denis Pushilin, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk, said on Monday that his forces had gained a foothold in Vuhledar, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.

Sunday’s civilian casualties came three days after at least 11 people were killed in missile strikes which were seen in Kyiv as the Kremlin’s response to pledges from Ukraine’s allies to supply battle tanks.

After weeks of wrangling, Germany and the United States last week said they would send Ukraine dozens of tanks to help push back Russian forces, opening the way for other countries to follow suit.

While a total of 321 heavy tanks had been promised to Ukraine by several countries, according to Kyiv’s ambassador to France, they could take months to appear on the battlefield.

Ukraine is keen to speed up the delivery of heavy weapons as both sides in the war are expected to launch spring offensives in the coming weeks.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg visited South Korea, a US ally and major arms exporter, on Monday and urged Seoul to increase military support to Ukraine.

Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Monday that as the United States had decided to supply tanks to Ukraine, it made no sense for Russia to talk to Kyiv or its Western “puppet masters”.

On Sunday, however, a Kremlin spokesperson told RIA Russian President Vladimir Putin was open to contacts with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who told German media that “I will also speak to Putin again because it is necessary to speak”.

“The onus is on Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine to end this horrendous, senseless war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives already,” he said.

Zelenskiy said he had sent a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron as part of his campaign to keep Russian athletes out of the Paris Olympic Games.

He said allowing Russia to compete at the 2024 Paris Games would be tantamount to showing that “terror is somehow acceptable”.