Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called on NATO members to provide Kyiv with all the weapons it needs in its battle with Russian forces as Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its seventh week.
“My agenda is very simple. It has only three items on it. Its weapons, weapons, and weapons,” Kuleba told journalists at NATO headquarters in Brussels on April 7.
He called for the dispatch of more planes, air-defense systems, missiles, and military vehicles from NATO allies.
Kuleba also said Ukraine will keep up demands on the West for an oil and gas embargo on Russia.
“We will continue to insist on full oil and gas embargo,” he told reporters ahead of a meeting with NATO foreign ministers.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said NATO was discussing how to increase its help to Ukraine with “different military weapons.”
“We are looking closely with our partners how we can support Ukraine in the future, more intensively and more coordinated because they have a right of self-defense and we will support this right of self-defense together with different partners,” she said at the NATO meeting.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that the Russian military was building up its forces for a new offensive in the east, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Ukraine, too, was preparing for battle, he said.
“We will fight and we will not retreat,” he said. “We will seek all possible options to defend ourselves until Russia begins to seriously seek peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we won’t give them up.”