Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address G7 leaders on Tuesday to demand a significant increase in their military and diplomatic support after the biggest Russian missile attack on Ukrainian cities since the start of the war.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, described the attack, in which cruise missiles and armed drones rained down on parks, playgrounds, power stations and other civilian targets, as “a profound change in the nature of this war”.
When he speaks to a virtual G7 summit on Tuesday, Zelenskiy will be seeking an equally profound change in western backing, which Kyiv complains has consistently lagged behind Ukraine’s requirements to defend its territory and people.
“We are dealing with terrorists,” the Ukrainian president will say. “They have two targets: energy infrastructure and people.”
Zelenskiy’s wishlist will emphasise anti-aircraft systems, and repeat the longstanding demand for longer-range missiles. Diplomatically, Ukraine wants Russia declared a state sponsor of terrorism, and its isolation underlined in a UN general assembly debate beginning on Monday. The assembly is due to debate Russia’s land-grab in the east and south of Ukraine, which the UK ambassador, Barbara Woodward, described as “the largest forcible annexation attempt since the second world war”.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, was “deeply shocked” by the attacks, his spokesperson said. “This constitutes another unacceptable escalation of the war and, as always, civilians are paying the highest price,” the spokesperson added.
As debate in the assembly began, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said: “A trail of blood is left behind the Russian delegation when it enters the general assembly and the hall is filled up with the smell of smouldering human flesh.”
Russia attempted to change the rules so that the vote on a resolution condemning the Russian annexation would be secret ballot, but was heavily defeated in successive votes.
On Monday, Germany announced that it would accelerate the delivery of an Iris-T infrared-guided air defence system, saying the first of four batteries would arrive within days. The US promised two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (Nasams) in July and a US defence official told the Washington Post they should arrive within weeks. Estonia meanwhile, prepared legislation that would designate Russia as a terrorist state.
Zelenskiy spoke to Joe Biden and tweeted later: “Air defence is currently the No 1 priority in our defence cooperation. We also need US leadership with the G7’s tough stance and with support for our [UN general assembly] resolution.”
After the conversation, the White House issued a statement saying Biden “pledged to continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defense systems”.
It was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the Nasams already promised.
Earlier the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, assured Zelenskiy “of the solidarity of Germany and the other G7 states”.
Germany, the current president of the group of wealthy industrialised democracies, will host Tuesday’s virtual summit. A German government spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit, said on Monday: “Germany will do everything in its power to mobilise additional aid and, in particular, to help repair and restore [Ukraine’s] damaged and destroyed civilian infrastructure, such as the electricity and heating supply.”
Zelenskiy said over 100 projectiles were launched at Ukrainian cities, more than half of which were intercepted by Ukrainian air defence batteries.
Those that got through Ukrainian defences hit civilian targets including a play park and pedestrian bridge that is a tourist attraction in Kyiv. Lviv, Ternópil and Dnipro were among the other cities that were targeted, as well as Zaporizhzhia, where residential areas were bombarded for the third night in a row. At least 14 people are reported to have been killed and scores more injured.
Vladimir Putin claimed the missile strikes, launched from warships, strategic bombers and Iranian-made drones, were in retaliation for a blast on Saturday that damaged the Kerch bridge joining Russia to the Crimean peninsula, seized from Ukraine in 2014, and warned of even more “severe retaliation” in the event of further Ukrainian attacks.
“Let there be no doubt,” Putin said in televised comments addressed to his security council, “if attempts at terrorist attacks continue, the response from Russia will be severe.”
However, Ukrainian intelligence said the Russian preparations for the attacks on cities and infrastructure began on 2 October, when orders were issued for long-range bomber units to prepare.
The defence ministry’s main intelligence directorate said that seven Tu-160 supersonic strategic bombers had been moved to the “Olenya” airfield south of Murmansk to be loaded with the cruise missiles used against Kyiv and other cities. At the same time, it claimed six warships armed with 40 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles were deployed off the Crimean coast.
The intent was to destroy thermal power plants as winter approaches, while seeking to create panic among the civilian population and intimidate Europe.
Western leaders vowed that their support would only be further galvanised by the attacks on civilian targets.
The US ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, met Zelenskiy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, at the president’s office a few hours after the attack, and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, spoke by phone to his opposite number, Dmytro Kuleba.
Zelenskiy also spoke to the UK prime minister, Liz Truss, saying that Ukraine was counting on British leadership “in consolidating international political and defence support for Ukraine, in particular regarding the protection of our skies”.
In her remarks to the G7 on Tuesday Truss is expected to say: “Nobody wants peace more than Ukraine. And for our part, we must not waver one iota in our resolve to help them win it.”
Jeremy Fleming, the head of the British spy agency GCHQ, is expected to say on Tuesday that Putin, insulated from any internal criticism, had made “strategic errors in judgment”.
The focus of the Ukrainian diplomatic effort will be on securing as great a show of Russian isolation as possible at the Unga, where many countries from the global south have up to now abstained, and in pursuing a terrorist designation for Moscow.
Designating Russia as a terrorist state will have different legal implications according to the country taking that step. The US lists four countries as state sponsors of terrorism: North Korea, Iran, Syria and Cuba. While there has been some pressure in Congress for such a designation to be applied to Russia, it has been resisted by the Biden administration, and some argue that such a designation would be counterproductive.
“The Russian Federation has demonstrated that it is a terrorist state that fights not with the Ukrainian army, but with peaceful citizens,” a Ukrainian source said, adding: “Russia is resorting to the methods of Nazi Germany, which mercilessly bombed European cities during the second world war – London, Coventry, Gdańsk, and many others.”
Ukraine is worried that Russia is seeking to create conditions by the start of the G20 summit in Bali in mid November in which western countries will press Kyiv to start negotiations on terms favourable to Moscow, though there is little sign at the moment of any meaningful cracks in the anti-Putin coalition.
