Denys Shmyhal made the appeal ahead of a Ukraine humanitarian aid conference in Paris on Tuesday, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported on its website.
Shmyhal warned on Monday that Russia was pounding his country's energy infrastructure “to trigger another wave of migration towards Europe” during the winter.
The United States has so far resisted providing Ukraine with Patriot air defence systems, while a recent attempt by Poland to get Germany to deploy a Patriot battery into the country was rejected by Berlin, The Guardian reported.
Meanwhile, European Union member states have reached a political agreement to provide Ukraine with EUR 2 billion in fresh security assistance from the so-called European Peace Facility, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński announced on Monday evening, after a meeting of the bloc's Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Also, following Monday’s virtual meeting of the Group of Seven countries, which was addressed by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the club’s leaders agreed there should be “an immediate focus on providing Ukraine with air defence systems and capabilities,” according to PAP.
Zelensky urged the G7 leaders to support his proposal to convene a global peace summit in the winter to help bring peace to Ukraine.
He also called on Western allies to supply Ukraine with an additional 2 billion cubic metres of natural gas, long-range weapons, modern tanks, artillery units and shells, according to the presidential website.
Meanwhile, the EU reached a deal in principle to supply Ukraine with EUR 18 billion in financial aid and approve a minimum tax on major corporations in what The Guardian described as “a big move that narrowed a rift between the bloc and recalcitrant member Hungary.”
On the frontlines, Russian forces were “continuing to shape and consolidate their force composition in eastern Ukraine,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank.
The Russian army was seeking “to bolster defenses against ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border and support limited offensive efforts in Donetsk Oblast,” the ISW said in its latest report on the war in Ukraine, published on Monday night.
Tuesday is day 293 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, The Guardian, consilium.europa,eu, president.gov.ua