In an interview with Sky News, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has discussed an anticipated Russian offensive.

“We see their attacks are stronger there may be a couple of surges,” he told Kay Burley.

“[It] depends on our strength and how we can repel their attacks.

“The east is losing a lot of people. They don’t care about that. We count their losses. 1,000s of soldiers - they just throw them into the meat grinder.”

Volodymyr Zelensky declined to say whether Boris Johnson should get an official role representing the UK on Ukraine.

“He is good guy,” he told Sky News. “Who knows? With pleasure, with pleasure, really.”

Asked if he would support another bid by Mr Johnson to become PM, Mr Zelensky said: “I think that is not correct for me to support Johnson to be prime minister.

“We have good relations with Sunak. I think we had more long relations with Johnson, because it was more long-time.

“I saw Johnson in different situations, I saw him not in war and then in full-scale war, that’s why we have special relations.”

Commons Defence Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood has said that Western countries need to do more to back Ukraine.

Speaking to Sky News, the Tory MP said: “There is nothing the West has done to date that threatened Moscow’s agenda.

“We’re now starting to talk with the political will to actually give Ukraine the necessary hardware that it can start to fight back, but it’s taken a full year to muster this hardware.”

He said: “We must recognise that Putin is now the most disruptive force in Europe and the penny really hasn’t dropped.

“I think it is always worth underlining how the UK has tried to push the envelope of what could be done.”

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Zelensky described the Russian president as a “man who said one thing and then did another” as he said he was not interested in meeting him.

Speaking in English, he said: “It is not interesting for me. Not interesting to meet, not interesting to speak. Why? Because we had meeting with him in Normandy Format, it was before full-scale invasion.

“I saw the man who said one thing and then did another. So for me, I can’t understand – is it his decisions or somebody else? So to meet what – to shake hands? Not interesting. To speak? I really don’t understand who makes decisions in Russia.”

He also accused Russia’s president of having a disregard for his troops and throwing them “into the meat grinder”, ahead of an anticipated new Russian offensive.

Dominic McGrath reports:

Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko has reported casualties in this morning’s missile strike.

A Russian rocket hit a non-residential building in the Holosiiv district of Kyiv, with Mr Klitschko confirming that one person was killed and two were wounded.

Explosions were heard across the capital earlier on Thursday morning, with civilians urged to remain in shelters.

The head of Kyiv’s administration says 15 Russian cruise missiles have been shot down.

A Ukrainian official has confirmed that targets in several Ukrainian regions were hit by Russian missiles this morning.

Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesman of Ukraine’s Air Force, stated on national TV that Vinnytsia was one of the regions hit.

“As many as six Tu-95 (warplanes) have preliminarily taken off from Murmansk region and launched missiles,” Mr Ihnat said.

“We expect more than 30 missiles that have in principle already begun to appear in various regions. Air defences are working”, he added.

An air raid alert has been ongoing for more than two hours, with explosions recorded in several areas including Kyiv. Civilians have been ordered to take cover.

A reporter from Reuters heard the sound of a missile flying overhead at a low altitude, about 30km (18 miles) from Kyiv.

NATO’s Secretary General has said sending tanks to Ukraine will make a “big difference” to the country’s ability to win the war.

Jens Stoltenberg told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Battle tanks are going to make a big difference.

“This will help them repel Russian offensives, to help them to be able to retake territory, liberate more Ukrainian lands and to win this war to prevail as a sovereign independent nation. We will stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

But he would not explicitly say he is pressing for NATO countries to give Ukraine the 300 tanks it says will help win the war.

Renewing calls for fighter jets, a senior official in Ukraine has said that US and German tank pledges are “only the beginning.”

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, made the comments after President Zelensky praised the decision by western allies.

“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support”, he said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.

After weeks of speculation, Biden approved sending 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Germany confirmed it would make 14 of its Leopard 2A6 tanks available to Ukraine, giving partner countries its permission to re-export other tanks.

Zelensky celebrated the “extremely good news”, labelling the US decision a “very powerful step.”

“There is a tank coalition. There is a decision to launch the supply of tanks for our defence. Modern tanks”, he added.

Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has spoken out about the potentially worrying signs of Putin’s state of mind following comments he made yesterday.

“Putin’s remark about ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ shooting Ukrainian soldiers in the back in order to prevent them from defecting captures the challenge Kyiv and the West are facing: a reckless, emotional leader who has boxed himself into a terrible information bubble,” Gabuev stated in a series of Twitter posts.

“Why is this important? Because some crucial decisions the Kremlin makes about the war may be based on same quality ‘information’ like Putin has shared today. The fact that there is no dispassionate interagency process in Russia, but an emotional and misinformed leader is chilling”, he added.

“This reality must feature prominently in quiet discussions that Western supporters of Ukraine have with leaders in Kyiv.

“There is a risk of overestimating Putin’s rationality and neglecting his growing detachment from reality when trying to redraw Moscow’s red lines. So far the West managed to do it in a firm, but careful manner avoiding doomsday scenarios.”

In an interview with Sky News, President Zelensky was asked about the prospect of peace talks with Putin.

He was not optimistic about talks with “nobody” Putin, but he did outline the conditions under which he believed that negotiations could begin.

“They don’t want talks and this was the case before the invasion,” he told Kay Burley.

“President Putin decided so. I am convinced that Ukraine is just the first step for him.

“I am convinced that he is waging a big war.

“We hope that once Russia pulls its troops back to their territory, they will admit their big mistakes and there will be a new government in the Russian Federation.

“We are neighbours. It will only be then that we will be resolving this situation.

“Then, probably, talks will be possible.”