Nato, partners aim to boost Kyiv’s air defence

More than 50 Western countries met yesterday to promise more weapons for Ukraine, focusing on its need for air defences after Moscow launched its most intense missile strikes since the start of the war.

Opening the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the headquarters of Nato in Brussels, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Russia's huge wave of missile attacks this week had laid bare the "malice and cruelty" of its war.

Ukraine had shifted the momentum in the conflict since September with "extraordinary" gains, but would need more help to keep fighting, he said.

"These victories belong to Ukraine's brave soldiers. But the Contact Group's security assistance, training, and sustainment efforts have been vital," Austin said.

Russian attacks using more than 100 missiles have killed at least 26 people across Ukraine since Monday, when President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called retaliatory strikes against Ukraine for an explosion on a bridge.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia's missile attacks were a sign of weakness.

"The reality is that they're not able to make progress on the battlefield. Russia is actually losing on the battlefield," Stoltenberg said.

Washington pledged after Monday's bloody salvos that it would up shipments of air defenses to Ukraine, while Germany promised delivery "in the coming days" of the first Iris-T missile shield reportedly capable of protecting a city.

As his forces have lost ground on the battlefield since September, Putin has escalated the conflict, ordering the call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists, proclaiming the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory and repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia.

US President Joe Biden yesterday said he doubted Putin would use a nuclear weapon.

Putin is a "rational actor who has miscalculated significantly", Biden said in a CNN interview, saying he believed the Russian president wrongly expected his invading troops to be welcomed.

"I think... he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv, and that where he was going to be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated," Biden said.

Asked how realistic he believed it would be for Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon, Biden responded: "Well, I don't think he will."

Nato's Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday the military alliance had not noticed any change in Russia's nuclear posture.

Biden warned last week that the world risks "Armageddon" in unusually direct remarks about the dangers from Putin's thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons to assist Russia's faltering attempt to take over swaths of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the United States was leading an all-out offensive to rally as many countries as possible to adopt a resolution at the UN condemning Moscow's annexation of Ukrainian regions.

"We believe the time has long passed for neutrality. There is no such thing as neutrality in a situation like this," said State Department spokesman Ned Price.