Volodymyr Zelensky has noted increased support from Western leaders, but expressed frustration when asked if weapons and other equipment Ukraine has received from other nations is sufficient to shift the war’s outcome.
“Not yet,” he said in an Associated Press interview, switching to English for emphasis. “Of course it’s not enough.”
In his nightly video address to the nation, the Ukrainian president thanked Boris Johnson and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer for visiting Kyiv.
The PM made a secret visit to Ukraine on Saturday to offer a new aid package including armoured vehicles and anti-ship missiles and praise the “invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people”.
Mr Zelensky repeated his call for a complete embargo on Russian oil and gas, which he called the sources of Moscow’s “self-confidence and impunity”.
“But Ukraine does not have time to wait. Freedom does not have time to wait. When tyranny begins its aggression against everything that keeps the peace in Europe, action must be taken immediately,” he said.
“And an oil embargo must be the first step. Moreover, by all democratic states, the entire civilised world. Then Russia will feel it. Then it will be an argument for them to seek peace, to stop the senseless violence.”
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06:44 AM
Novoselivka’s residents determined to rebuild
What had once been a peaceful community where people spent their days tending to their gardens and resting in their homes, it is now nothing more than a wasteland of flattened buildings and craters – some as large as seven metres wide and three metres deep – in the ground.
Volodymyr Stoyhi, 61, was resting on his sofa when a bomb flew into the living room of his Novoselivka home in the middle of March. His head was struck by falling debris but by some miracle he survived.
“We have to rebuild because we need somewhere to live,” he said, deflated.
However, he asked where he would even begin a project like this when “there is no money and nothing to build on”.
He described how houses fell “one after one” and that the small village, which once had a couple of shops and almost every house kept either chickens, ducks, or even pigs, in their back gardens, was unrecognisable.
The destruction is all because of a man who “is crazy and that is all”, he said of Vladimir Putin.
“We were friends with Russia and now everything is ruined.”
Read the full story here.
06:14 AM
Russia wants to boost armed forces with discharged personnel
British military intelligence said on Sunday that the Russian armed forces were seeking to strengthen troop numbers with personnel discharged from military service since 2012, as losses mount from the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian forces’ efforts to boost their fighting power also include trying to recruit from the unrecognised Transnistria region of Moldova, the Ministry of Defence said in a regular bulletin on Twitter:
05:31 AM
Zelensky committed to pressing for peace amid attacks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is committed to pressing for peace despite Russian attacks on civilians that have stunned the world.
In an interview with Associated Press he said: “No one wants to negotiate with a person or people who tortured this nation. It’s all understandable. And as a man, as a father, I understand this very well.
“[But] we don’t want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution.”
Mr Zelensky looked visibly exhausted yet animated by a drive to persevere. He spoke inside the presidential office complex, where windows and hallways are protected by towers of sandbags and heavily armed soldiers.
“We have to fight, but fight for life. You can’t fight for dust when there is nothing and no people. That’s why it is important to stop this war,” Mr Zelensky said.
Russian troops that withdrew from northern Ukraine are now regrouping for what is expected to be an intensified push to retake the eastern Donbas region, including the besieged port city of Mariupol that Ukrainian fighters are striving to defend.
The president said those defenders were tying up “a big part of the enemy forces”, characterising the battle to hold Mariupol as “the heart of the war” right now.
“It’s beating. We’re fighting. We’re strong. And if it stops beating, we will be in a weaker position,” he said.
04:04 AM
Biden an ‘old man in his senility’, says North Korea
North Korea has come to the defence of Russia by describing Joe Biden as an “old man in his senility”.
The personal attack on the US president comes after he accused the Russian leader of war crimes in Ukraine.
Mr Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal” and called for him to be put on trial over alleged atrocities against civilians in Bucha.
“The latest story is the US chief executive who spoke ill of the Russian president with groundless data,” said a commentary carried by the official KCNA news agency.
“Such reckless remarks can be made only by the descendants of Yankees, master hand at aggression and plot-breeding.”
It described Mr Biden as a “president known for his repeated slip of tongue”, but stopped short of referring to him by name.
“The conclusion could be that there is a problem in his intellectual faculty and that his reckless remarks are just a show of imprudence of an old man in his senility,” said the commentary, which was issued on Saturday evening.
“Gloomy, it seems, is the future of the US with such a feeble man in power.”
Pyongyang has sided with Moscow in its war with Ukraine, accusing the US of being the “root cause” of the crisis.
