Ukraine’s allies should consider “quickly, as a next step, providing long-range systems” and fighter jets to Ukraine, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said Thursday.
Metsola, speaking ahead of an address by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the response to Russia’s invasion “must be proportional to the threat, and the threat is existential.” Zelenskyy has repeatedly lobbied the EU and the U.S. for long-range missiles and warplanes aimed at driving back an expected Russian offensive this spring.
Zelenskyy made his pitch again Thursday in Brussels before the European Parliament, thanking EU leaders for their support and urging them to provide more weaponry.
“The Kremlin has been consistently destroying, step by step, year after year, what we see as the basis of our Europe,” Zelenskyy told EU leaders. “The sacred value of human life has been completely destroyed in Russia as well.”
Zelenskyy, who met Wednesday with the leaders of the UK, France and Germany, received standing ovations before, during and after his speech.
Developments:
►Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has stopped recruiting prisoners to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said.
►Russian forces “have regained the initiative in Ukraine and have begun their next major offensive” in the eastern Luhansk province, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported.
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