President Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies to provide Ukraine with better air defences, including fighter jets, after a barrage of Russian missiles hit residential areas.
“Air defence, a modern air force – without which effective air defence is impossible – artillery, armoured vehicles.
“Everything that is necessary to provide security to our cities, to our villages, both in the hinterland and on the front lines,” Zelensky listed in a video message on Friday night.
He condemned the attack in the city of Uman in the early hours of Friday that had killed at least 23 people, including four children.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a mother and her 3-year-old daughter were also killed by night-time Russian shelling.
Ten residential buildings were hit by missiles in the central Ukrainian city of Uman in the Cherkasy region, officials said.
One block of flats was destroyed. Eighteen people were injured in the attack, nine of whom were being treated in hospital.
“Russian evil can be stopped by weapons – our defenders are doing it. And it can be stopped by sanctions – global sanctions must be enhanced,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter earlier in the day.
The Ukrainian president has long called for more weapons, a tightening of international punitive measures against Russia and better monitoring of the implementation of the export restrictions imposed so far.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, on Friday gave the total number of missiles fired at Ukraine during the night as 23.
Of these, 21 were shot down, along with two drones.
The Ukrainian military said cruise missiles were also fired near the capital Kiev, with air defences downing 11 of them.
Shelling in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk has killed seven and injured 19, local authorities reported on Friday.
Among other things, a large taxi used to transport several people caught fire and burned out completely as a result of the Ukrainian rocket fire, the local authorities said.
Kiev regularly denies targeting civilian objects in its attacks. The information from the war zone could not be independently verified.
Elsewhere, Defence Minister Oleksii Resnikov said preparations for Ukraine’s long-announced spring offensive are nearing completion.
“In general terms, we are already ready to a high percentage,” Resnikov said at a press conference in the capital.
According to Resnikov, only a few elements are still missing to launch the offensive.
“The technology itself has been announced, prepared and partly delivered,” the minister said. For some of the weapons systems, however, the training of Ukrainian soldiers has not yet been completed.
Zelensky also spoke on Friday about his phone call this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping – the first one-to-one conversation between the two since the Russian invasion more than 14 months ago.
He and Xi had spoken about the territorial integrity of Ukraine “including [the Russian-annexed Black Sea peninsula of] Crimea” and the United Nations Charter, Zelensky said at a press conference.
Zelensky said he asked Xi, who has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to influence Moscow with regard to the return of Ukrainian prisoners of war and some 20,000 “abducted children.
“I say it openly, at the moment only Ukraine is helping Ukraine with the return of our children,” Zelensky complained.
There were efforts on the part of the United Nations, but only with weak results, he added, saying this is why he had asked Xi for help. (dpa/NAN)
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