By Tom Balmforth
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy elevated stress on the US to let Kyiv strike deeper into Russian territory after his representatives met senior U.S. officers in Washington on Saturday.
Washington has supplied Ukraine with greater than $50 billion value of navy help since 2022, however has restricted the usage of its weapons to Ukrainian soil and defensive crossborder operations.
“Clearing the Ukrainian sky of Russian guided aerial bombs is a strong step to force Russia to seek an end to the war and a just peace,” Zelenskiy mentioned in his nightly video deal with.
Interesting to the US, Britain, France and Germany, he mentioned, “We need the capabilities to truly and fully protect Ukraine and Ukrainians.
“We want each the permissions for long-range capabilities and your long-range shells and missiles.”
Without providing specifics, he said his representatives had “supplied all the required particulars” to Ukraine’s partners.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, in Washington with a delegation on Friday and Saturday to meet U.S. officials and experts, said in an interview broadcast by CNN that Kyiv was showing Russian airfields used to hit Ukrainian cities were within range of deep strikes.
“We now have defined what sort of capabilities we have to defend the residents in opposition to the Russian terror that Russians are inflicting us, so I hope we had been heard,” Umerov said in the interview late on Friday.
Zelenskiy is expected to deliver a similar plea in person next month, when he will present a plan for victory to President Joe Biden near the end of his time in the Oval Office, and attend United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York.
Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who headed Kyiv’s delegation, said in a post on X that she had discussed the steps needed to restore Ukraine’s energy system, including a “vital contribution” being made by an $800 million power sector financing package deal that was introduced in June.
Russian air strikes have affected greater than half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, she mentioned.
The president’s chief of employees Andriy Yermak joined Umerov in briefing U.S. Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin in regards to the scenario on the battlefield within the first assembly of their go to on Friday, the presidential workplace mentioned in an announcement.
Talking on the finish of per week when Russia hit Ukraine with greater than 400 missiles and drones, Yermak mentioned it was vital for Ukraine to obtain weapons from current defence packages as quickly as potential, the workplace mentioned.
(Further reporting and writing by Elaine Monaghan in Bloomington, Indiana; further reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv; enhancing by Christina Fincher)
