President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appealed directly on Friday to Western military leaders for faster weapons deliveries on the heels of a flurry of major Russian missile strikes.
Better defense against such strikes and the ability to hit back at targets in Russia would help Ukraine put military pressure on Moscow “so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” Mr. Zelensky said. But in opening comments, he lamented that prohibitions on firing long-range, Western-provided missiles and rockets into Russia persisted. “We see your long-range policy has not changed,” he said.
Mr. Zelensky spoke in person at a conference in Germany on weapons donations as he pursues what he calls a policy of combining military pressure and diplomacy to seek an end to the war.
The meetings, known as the Ramstein Format, bring together generals and defense ministers to coordinate on arms supplies for Kyiv. They take place periodically and are intended to address the most pressing needs of the Ukrainian army, with donations from about 50 nations.
The last meeting came in June, before Ukraine launched a surprise ground attack into Russia that added a new swath of about 60 miles of frontline inside Russia — and created an even greater need for new weapons if Ukraine is to hold the territory. The attack was not coordinated with allies, Ukrainian and Western officials have said.
In opening remarks, Mr. Zelensky outlined what he described as gains a month into the incursion, seizing 500 square miles of Russian territory even as Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, threatening to capture the strategic hub of Pokrovsk. At the same time, Mr. Zelensky said, the Ukrainian army has killed or wounded about 6,000 Russian soldiers on Russian soil in the past month. The assertion could not be independently verified.
The meeting on Friday also followed a grim, nearly two-week wave of Russian missile bombardments inside Ukraine, which some military analysts view as at least in part a riposte to the ground invasion. Those included one strike on Tuesday on a military academy in the east-central city of Poltava that killed at least 55 people and wounded about 300 others.
Mr. Zelensky called for expanding deliveries of F-16 fighter jets, the first of which arrived last month and were used initially to shoot down incoming cruise missiles and exploding drones. Ukraine has fewer trained pilots than planes, military analysts have said. Last month one recently delivered F-16 crashed, killing the pilot, on one of the first combat missions for F-16’s in Ukraine.
The month-old ground attack into the Kursk region of southwestern Russia, Mr. Zelensky said, has served to highlight Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s strategic goal of seizing Ukrainian land rather than defending Russia’s. Russia has not diverted forces from an offensive in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to defend in Kursk.
“Putin wants to occupy more of Ukraine more than he wants security for Russia,” Mr. Zelensky said.
On Thursday, Mr. Putin reaffirmed that his army would focus on advancing in eastern Ukraine, calling it his “first-priority goal,” while calling Ukraine’s push into Russia a mistake that “weakened” it.
Mr. Zelensky spoke after Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, opened the meeting at the Ramstein air base in Germany with assurances of continued Western support, even as Germany has wavered during a budget crisis and Donald J. Trump has suggested he would halt American aid if he won the U.S. election and Ukraine refused to enter settlement talks.
Mr. Austin told Mr. Zelensky that countries backing Ukraine “hear your urgency” on weapons supplies. He said Russia is now “on the defensive on its own turf” while Ukraine still faces a Russian offensive in the east.
And Mr. Austin noted the steep cost Russia has paid for the invasion, saying Russia has lost 350,000 soldiers either killed or wounded since 2022. Ukraine has sunk or damaged 32 Russian naval vessels and shot down 97 combat aircraft, he said.
The gathering was the 24th meeting in the Ramstein Format since April 2022. Mr. Zelensky’s attendance in person highlighted the sensitivity of the moment in a new, more active phase of the war. This week Mr. Zelensky instituted the biggest shake-up of his cabinet in a bid to reset Ukraine’s war effort and shift its fortunes.
Mykhailo Samus, the deputy director on international issues at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, in Ukraine, said Mr. Zelensky most likely attended in person to draw attention to sluggish deliveries of weaponry even after it was pledged by Western nations. “The process goes slowly,” he said.
“The main task of Zelensky at Ramstein is to bring some adrenaline to the partners,” Mr. Samus said.
Mr. Zelensky has said he intends to present a plan to end the war to President Biden — and the candidates to succeed him, Kamala Harris and Mr. Trump — in a visit to the United States later this month that will coincide with the United Nations General Assembly. He has described military pressure on Russia, including long-range strikes and the ground incursion into the Kursk region, as elements of the plan, along with efforts to rally support for a Ukrainian diplomatic initiative for settlement talks.
Mr. Putin has rejected the Ukrainian settlement process, but has said he would be willing to revive negotiations on terms first discussed at talks in Istanbul at the start of the full-scale invasion.
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