close
Thursday March 28, 2024

Ukraine asks Nato summit for modern artillery, funding

By AFP
June 30, 2022

MADRID: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Nato leaders on Wednesday that Ukraine needs modern weapons and more financial aid in its fight against Russia’s invasion.

“We need to break the Russian artillery advantage... We need much more modern systems, modern artillery,” Zelensky told a Nato summit in Madrid via video link. He added that financial support was “no less important than aid with weapons”.

“Russia still receives billions every day and spends them on war. We have a multibillion-dollar deficit, we don’t have oil and gas to cover it,” Zelensky said, adding that Ukraine needs around $5 billion a month for its defence. He also called for sanctions on Russia “that will stop its ability to pay for the war”.

Washington and Brussels have slapped Moscow with unprecedented sanctions over its invasion of pro-Western Ukraine that President Vladimir Putin launched on February 24. The United States and Canada, which are far less reliant on Russia as an energy supplier than Europe, have banned all Russian oil imports. The European Union, however, has introduced a gradual oil embargo as part of its sanctions on Moscow.

Zelensky on Wednesday told Indonesia’s visiting President Joko Widodo that he will attend the upcoming G20 summit in Bali depending on who else is attending. “Certainly I accept the invitation. Ukraine’s participation will depend on the security situation in the country and on the composition of the summit’s participants,” Zelensky said following their talks in Kyiv, in an apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attendance.

Widodo was in Kyiv Wednesday before heading to Moscow to meet Putin, who on February 24 sent troops into pro-Western Ukraine. Indonesia, like most major emerging economies, has tried to maintain a neutral position and has called for a peaceful resolution to Russia’s months-long offensive in Ukraine. Indonesia holds the rotating presidency of the G20 this year and Jakarta has come under Western pressure to exclude Russia’s president from the gathering after announcing in April he had been invited.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Tuesday that Widodo had ruled out Putin’s attendance at the body’s November summit, a statement the Kremlin quickly rejected. G20 nations make up about 80 percent of total world economic output, while the G7 contributes about 31 percent.

Putin joined last year’s G20 summit in Rome in October via video conference, due to the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence said on Wednesday that 144 Ukrainian soldiers, including scores of defenders of the Azovstal steelworks in the southern port city of Mariupol, had been freed in a prisoner swap with Moscow. “This is the largest exchange since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. Of the 144 freed, 95 are Azovstal defenders,” the main intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Telegram.

It did not specify when and where the swap took place or how many Russian prisoners were released as part of the exchange. It added that 43 of the freed servicemen belonged to the Azov regiment, a former paramilitary unit that is now integrated into the Ukrainian army.