Ukraine’s top general lays out the ‘urgent’ military needs to fight Russia – as nations pledge more support

Call comes as emergency services end search for survivors at an apartment block in Dnipro hit in Russian missile strikes over the weekend

Fighting has been intense in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks (Reuters)

Ukraine’s top general has laid out the “urgent needs” of his armed forces in a first face-to-face meeting with his US counterpart, with Kyiv hopeful of securing the tanks that it believes are needed to drive back Russian forces.

“I outlined the urgent needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the fulfilment of which will accelerate our victory,” General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi wrote in a statement on Telegram following the meeting in Poland with the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley.

Western allies are scheduled to meet at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday to pledge military support for Ukraine, with a focus on the proposal to provide battle tanks. German-made Leopard tanks, held by armies across Europe, are seen as the most likely option to be sent in large numbers, but Berlin has been reticent to provide the approval required. That decision now sits with Germany’s new defence minister, Boris Pistorius, who has been chosen to replace Christine Lambrecht, who quit after a number of recent missteps.

An illustration of why Ukraine is pushing so hard for Western support was provided in the central city of Dnipro, where authorities called an end to the search for survivors in the ruins of an apartment building destroyed during Russian missile attacks on Saturday.

Forty-four people were confirmed killed, including a number of children, and 20 remain unaccounted for in the attack. Seventy-nine people were wounded and 39 rescued from the rubble.

Residents left flowers and cuddly toys at a makeshift memorial near the devastated apartment block, while hundreds of mourners bade farewell to boxing coach Mykhailo Korenovskyi, killed in a strike. Stark footage showed the kitchen of his apartment, decorated in bright yellow colours, now exposed to the air after the external wall was torn off. A recent family video, filmed in the same kitchen, showed Mr Korenovskyi’s daughter smiling and blowing out four candles on her birthday cake while he stood behind her, holding another child in his arms.

An adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has tendered his resignation after causing a public outcry by suggesting a missile that hit the apartment block had been shot down by Ukraine. Hours after the missile strike, Oleksiy Arestovych initially said it appeared that the Russian missile had fallen on the building after being shot down by Ukrainian air defences. Moscow often blames Ukraine’s air defences for missile strikes.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Arestovych, a presidential adviser for Mr Zelensky, posted a photograph of a letter of resignation and acknowledged making a “fundamental error”.

“I offer my sincere apologies to the victims and their relatives, the residents of Dnipro and everyone who was deeply hurt by my prematurely erroneous version of the reason for the Russian missile striking a residential building,” he wrote.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, urged delegates at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos to do more to help end the war. “Unity is what brings peace back,” she said.

Separately, the Netherlands plans to send a Patriot missile defence system to Ukraine, the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte told US president Joe Biden at the White House. Also in Washington, the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said Nato allies were conveying a clear message to Russian president Vladimir Putin by boosting their arms supplies to Ukraine.

“The message we’re sending to Putin... is that we made a commitment to support Ukrainians until they are victorious,” Mr Cleverly told a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.