Ukraine says its counter-offensive to reclaim territory that’s under Russian occupation continues, despite the so-called referendums held by pro-Russian officials in four regions of the country. Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to President Zelensky, has again called on Western countries to impose further sanctions on Russia and to increase the supply of weapons to Ukraine. He told me nothing changes in practical terms because Russia “already occupies those territories” and that the Ukrainian government is “engaged in the liberation” of those areas. “I think that Ukraine's next step is to intensify the negotiation process with our international partners to increase the supply of certain types of weapons, including missiles of a certain range in order to make us able to destroy sites storing Russian weapons in Crimea, from where they are taken to the territory of Ukraine.”
“We definitely suggest to our partners that... they should increase the sanctions pressure [on Russia] and, for example, eventually withdraw all key Russian banks from the Swift program... that is, to make sanctions really unsustainable for the Russian Federation.”
