Ukraine calls for ‘weapons, weapons, weapons’ from western allies

Ukraine has called for more heavy weaponry from its western allies and “ruinous” sanctions against Moscow as EU member states prepared to halt Russian coal imports but remained divided over a more far-reaching energy ban.

“My agenda is very simple,” the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Thursday before a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels. It has only three items on it. It’s weapons, weapons, and weapons.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said new western sanctions especially from Europe did not go far enough and Russia would see them as “permission to attack”. Some politicians were still “unable to decide how to limit the flow of … oil euros to Russia so as not to put their economies at risk”, he said.

The west must “bring Russia to justice”, Zelenskiy told the Greek parliament, and teach Moscow that “those who blackmail Europe with an economic and energy crisis always lose”. Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office, said sanctions “must be ruinous enough for us to end this terrible war”.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the bloc should approve its fifth round of economic sanctions, including a ban on Russian coal imports worth about €4bn (£3.3bn), on Thursday and that measures against Russian oil would be discussed by foreign ministers on Monday.