A summary of today's developments
Air raid alerts were in place across much of western and southern Ukraine early on Saturday, with Ukrainian officials reporting that Russia had fired four Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea.
Two people were injured in a strike on the western city of Khmelnytskyi, according to the local mayor.
One civilian was also reported killed in shelling in the eastern city of Vovchansk, just a few miles from the Russian border.
The number of Russian soldiers killed since the invasion has reached 142,270, according to the Ukrainian military.
Discussions at the Munich security conference, where world leaders have gathered this weekend, have focused in large part on the war.
Ukraine must win its battle against Russia’s invasion, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said, warning that a Russian victory might embolden Moscow to attack other countries. Pistorius said he assured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Germany and its allies would help Kyiv “for as long as it takes”.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, called on the west to “double down” on its military support to Ukraine. “When Putin started this war, he gambled that our resolve would falter,” he said. “But we proved him wrong then, and we will prove him wrong now.”
The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said there was “no doubt” that Russia had committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU wants to work with the defence industry to quicken and scale up the production of ammunition, both for the Ukrainian military and to replenish stocks at home.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said it is becoming “increasingly difficult” for the Russian government to “insulate the population” from the reality of the war.
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The EU is urgently exploring ways for its member countries to team up to buy ammunition to help Ukraine, following warnings from Kyiv that its forces need more supplies quickly, diplomats and officials said.
EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss the idea of joint procurement of 155mm artillery shells at a meeting in Brussels on Monday.
“It is now the time, really, to speed up the production, and to scale up the production of standardised products that Ukraine needs desperately,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
Von der Leyen later said she was confident the urgency of the situation would convince EU members to set aside their longstanding preference for buying arms at national level.
“In this atrocious war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine, we see that we can move mountains under pressure,” she told Reuters.
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