Ukraine says 2024 priority is to gain control of the skies

DAVOS, Switzerland: Ukraine´s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday said his country´s priority for 2024 is to gain control over its skies as Russia´s full-scale assault enters its third year.

His comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos came just hours after Russian drone and missile attacks overnight wounded at least 20 people across Ukraine and shelling killed two civilians. The barrage left massive craters in the southern city of Odesa where AFP journalists saw residential buildings charred in the wake of the assault.

Rescue workers hauled out vulnerable residents on stretchers from housing blocks that had had their windows blown out in the Black Sea city, footage from emergency services showed. “In 2024, of course the priority is to throw Russia from the skies,” Kuleba said in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“Because the one who controls the skies will define when and how the war will end,” he added. Kyiv has long pressured the West to deliver advanced fighter jets to support its troops entrenched in the south and east of the country.

Responding to those calls, President Emmanuel Macron announced this week that France would deliver a new batch of around 40 SCALP long-range cruise missiles as well as hundreds of bombs as Kyiv fights the Russian invasion.

But even that pledge is limited compared to the range of munitions that Russian forces have recently been raining down across Ukraine. Officials in Kyiv have seen a steep rise in civilian casualties since December, as Moscow intensifies air attacks, reversing a downward trend seen earlier in 2023, the United Nations has warned.

On Wednesday, officials in the southern region of Kherson said one person had been killed and another injured by Russian shelling. And in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Governor Oleg Synegubov said a woman was killed in Russian shelling on a village near the border.