CAPRI, Italy (Dispatches) - Group of Seven (G7) major powers pledged on Friday to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses to counter increasingly deadly Russian attacks.
Foreign ministers from the G7, comprising the United States, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain, wrapped up three days of talks on the island of Capri that were dominated by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
They acknowledged they had to do more to help Ukraine, which is struggling to hold off stronger Russian forces.
Alarmed by growing Russian momentum on the battlefield, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba came to Capri in person to tell G7 allies that they needed to send more aid, saying wars in his home country and the Middle East were linked.
The G7 said in a statement it would increase security assistance for Kyiv, specifically bolstering “Ukraine’s air defense capabilities to save lives and protect critical infrastructure”.
At the  G7 foreign ministers’ meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also said that Ukraine had an “urgent, critical need for more air defense.”
While NATO allies had made “encouraging” recent commitments on military support, he said: “We should have given them more earlier.”
He was speaking to reporters ahead of a working session on Ukraine, also attended by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Ukraine has struggled on the battlefield for months, outgunned and outnumbered by Russian forces amid a shortage of Western military aid.
On Thursday, Russia said that the latest aid package by the west for Ukraine will fail to change the military situation in favor of Kyiv, as Washington gears up for a seminal weekend vote on a long-stalled major military aid package for the ex-Soviet republic.
At a press conference on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that the $61 billion package of U.S. funding for Ukraine would not change the dynamics on the battlefield.
“It won’t in any way influence the development of the situation on the front. All experts now assert that the situation on the front is very unfavorable for the Ukrainian side. Therefore it will not be able to change anything,” he said.
His comments came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already warned that his country will lose its war with Russia if the U.S. Congress withholds the major aid package, saying that the months-long delay has cost Ukraine lives and territory.
CIA Director William Burns has said that Ukrainian defenses could completely collapse under a Russian onslaught as early as this year unless the U.S. approves a new aid package for Kyiv. His comments come after U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that the chamber would vote on the long-delayed measure later this week.
Speaking at the Bush Center’s 2024 Forum on Leadership on Thursday, Burns stressed the urgency of the U.S. approving a $61 billion security aid package for Ukraine. The bill has been held up for months in Congress due to Republican opposition demanding more efforts to enhance security on the Mexican border.
Meanwhile on Friday, Ukraine shot down a Russian strategic bomber 300 km (185 miles) from its border after the warplane took part in an airstrike that killed at least eight people, including two children, in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Kyiv said.
Missiles rained down on the city of Dnipro and the surrounding region in the early hours, damaging residential buildings, the main train station and wounding at least 28 civilians, regional officials said.
Russia has stepped up its long-range aerial assaults on Ukraine’s energy system and other targets in recent weeks, ratcheting up the pressure on Kyiv far behind the front lines where Russian forces have been slowly advancing in the east.