KYIV/VOLGOGRAD: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged European leaders visiting Kyiv on Thursday to pile more sanctions on Russia, where President Vladimir Putin evoked a famous World War Two victory over the Nazis to rally his nation.
The West has imposed sweeping punitive measures since Russia's nearly year-old invasion of Ukraine that has devastated cities, killed tens of thousands of people, forced millions to flee their homes and shaken the global economy.
In the latest violence, a Russian missile destroyed apartments in Kramatorsk, killing at least three people and trapping others under rubble, police said.
Moscow said it struck U.S.-made rocket launchers in the area about 55 km (34 miles) northwest of Bakhmut, currently the main focus of fighting in eastern Ukraine where Russia has been making incremental gains in recent weeks.
Speaking in Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad where the Soviet army defeated Nazi forces 80 years ago, Putin predicted a new victory in Ukraine. He lambasted Germany for helping to arm Kyiv and said he was ready to draw on Russia's entire arsenal, which includes nuclear weapons.
"Unfortunately we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country," he said in a speech.
"Again and again we have to repel the aggression of the collective West. It's incredible but it's a fact: we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them."
Putin casts his "special military operation" in Ukraine as a fight to "disarm" his neighbour, a fellow former Soviet republic, and defend Russia against an aggressive West. Ukraine and the West call it an illegal war to expand Russian territory.
'DEMOCRACIES V REGIMES'
After arriving in Kyiv by train for talks about Ukraine's aspiration to join the European Union, the head of the bloc's executive Commission pledged more aid for Ukraine.
"Russia is paying a heavy price as our sanctions are eroding its economy, throwing it back by a generation. We will keep turning up the pressure further," Ursula von der Leyen told a joint news conference with Zelenskiy.
He urged more sanctions, saying the pace had "slightly slowed" and that Moscow was adapting to them during the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War Two. "The faster and better this task is accomplished, the closer we will be to defeating the aggression of the Russian Federation," he said.
Von der Leyen said there would be more military, financial and political aid before the Feb. 24 invasion anniversary. She also announced the creation of an international centre in The Hague to prosecute crimes of aggression in Ukraine.
"We know the future of our continent is being written here ... This is a fight of democracies against authoritarian regimes," she said.
Determined to make progress before Ukraine receives newly promised Western battle tanks and armoured vehicles, Russia has picked up momentum on the battlefield.
It announced advances north and south of Bakhmut, which has suffered persistent Russian bombardment for months.
Russian forces are pushing from both the north and south to encircle Bakhmut, using superior troop numbers to try to cut it off from re-supply and force the Ukrainians out, Ukrainian military analyst Yevhen Dikiy said.
"The enemy is able to use its sole resource, which it has in excess - its men," Dikiy told Espreso TV, describing a landscape to the northeast of Bakhmut "literally covered with corpses".
Ukraine and its Western allies say Moscow has taken huge losses around Bakhmut, sending in waves of poorly equipped troops, including thousands of recruits from prisons.
A former commander of Russia's Wagner mercenary group who fled to Norway told Reuters he regretted fighting in Ukraine and was speaking out to bring perpetrators of atrocities to justice. "Although I don't know how it would be received, I want to say I'm sorry," said 26-year-old Andrei Medvedev.
He said he witnessed two people who did not want to fight being shot dead in front of newly-enrolled ex-convicts.
ARMS RACE
Ukraine has secured pledges of weapons from the West offering new capabilities - the latest expected this week to include rockets from the United States that would nearly double the range of Ukrainian forces.
"We're focused on providing Ukraine the capability that it needs to be effective in its upcoming anticipated counter- offensive in the spring," U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
The new weaponry would put all of Russia's supply lines in eastern Ukraine, as well as parts of Crimea, seized from Ukraine and annexed by Russia in 2014, within range of Ukrainian forces.
Moscow says such rockets will escalate the conflict but not change its course. It too says its arms supplies will increase.
"The greater the range of the weapons supplied to the Kyiv regime the more we will have to push them back from territories which are part of our country," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian state TV.
Moscow claims to have annexed four Ukrainian provinces last year, in addition to Crimea.
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