The Ukrainian president's chief of staff called on Western countries to hand over “offensive weapons” as a form of “deterrence” against Russia, ahead of an extraordinary NATO summit scheduled on Thursday.
“Our armed forces and our citizens are resisting with superhuman courage, but we cannot win a war without offensive weapons, without medium-range missiles, which can be deterrents,” said Andriy Yermak, in a video published on Telegram on Tuesday night.
“It is impossible to defend ourselves effectively for a long time without a reliable air defense system capable of shooting down long-range enemy missiles,” Yermak argued.
However, “they don't give them to us,” he regretted, “just as they don't give us planes.”
The request for aircraft has so far been systematically rejected by Western countries, which do not want to intervene militarily in Ukraine for fear of expanding the conflict with Russia.
NATO will hold an extraordinary summit on Thursday in Brussels, where the G7 and the European Union will also meet, to study the situation in Ukraine and military aid.
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