Zelenskyy urges Ukraine allies to allow long-range weapons use in Russia

Ukrainian president seeks to rally more support at meeting of key backers as the United States pledges an additional $250m in aid.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged his Western allies to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia and increase pressure on Moscow to end the war.

“We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the divided territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” Zelenskyy said on Friday at a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) at Germany’s Ramstein Air Base.

“We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

The United States pledged an additional $250m in military aid to Ukraine, which was announced by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin at the meeting of the UDCG – also known informally as the Ramstein group.

It has regularly gathered together representatives of some 50 nations which supply arms to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“It will surge in more capabilities to meet Ukraine’s evolving requirements. And we’ll deliver them at the speed of war,” Austin said.

Zelenskyy’s presence at the meeting, his first since it was set up, was significant, occurring at a crucial juncture of the war after a deadly Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Poltava, in which 55 people were killed and 300 wounded.

Moscow’s forces are currently advancing in the Donbas region, with Putin on Thursday declaring that capturing the eastern area was his “primary objective” in the conflict.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s surprise push into Russia’s Kursk region last month caught Russian forces off-guard, though Putin on Thursday dismissed the offensive, stressing that the move had failed to slow Moscow’s advance.

Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said Zelenskyy had delivered the message that Ukraine would have to attack deep into Russia to make Putin realise that “he’s not going to be able to achieve his goals”.

The Ukrainian president had thanked the countries that had supplied F-16 fighter jets and long-range missile systems like Storm Shadow, but said the country needed more to bring Putin “and the Russian government to the negotiating table”.

But it was not clear whether Zelenskyy would achieve his aims.

Austin had conveyed that the US would give “everything we can, but not necessarily everything that Zelenskyy wants”, said Al Jazeera’s Kane.

Additionally, the German government had established “red lines” on allowing their weapons to be used deep into Russian territory.

Since 2022, the Ramstein group has provided about $106bn in security assistance to Ukraine. The US, Kyiv’s biggest backer, has provided a share of more than $56bn.

Speaking to reporters in Oslo, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine. “I call on China to stop supporting Russia’s illegal war,” he said.

China has previously described similar statements made by NATO as “malicious” and biased.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies