Russia-Ukraine war: foreign ministers to meet on EU-wide ammunition deal after call for urgent action – live

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron of wasting his time considering any sort of dialogue with Russia.

Zelenskiy, interviewed by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Sunday, was responding to a suggestion by Macron that Russia should be “defeated but not crushed” and that the conflict in Ukraine would have to be settled by negotiations.

The two presidents spoke by telephone on Sunday. Zelenskiy later told the Italian daily:

It will be a useless dialogue. In fact Macron is wasting his time. I have come to the conclusion that we are not able to change the Russian attitude.”

On Friday, Macron urged allies to step up military support for Ukraine.

He also said in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche he did not believe in regime change, that there was little chance of a democratic solution from within Russian civil society and no alternative to bringing Putin back to the negotiating table.

Macron has drawn criticism from some Nato allies for delivering mixed messages regarding his policy on the war between Ukraine and Russia.

In describing their conversation on Sunday, Zelenskiy made no mention of Macron’s latest comments. The leaders discussed strategies, including joint decisions Zelenskiy said were due ahead of this week’s first anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

Before a brief visit to Paris this month, Zelenskiy said the French president’s tougher stand on Russia in recent months showed had had undergone a significant change.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine will maintain its months-long defence of the eastern city of Bakhmut, but “not at any price and not for everyone to die”.

Zelenskiy was quoted in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Sunday as debate rages over whether Kyiv’s forces should remain in the eastern Ukraine city, which Russian shelling has all but destroyed.

Bakhmut, in the frontline Donetsk region, had a pre-war population of 70,000 but now Ukrainian officials estimate fewer than 5,000 civilians remain.

Yes, it is not a particularly big town. In fact, like many others in Donbas, [it’s been] devastated by the Russians. It is important for us to defend it, but not at any price and not for everyone to die,” Zelenskiy told the paper.

Analysts say the town has more symbolic than strategic value as a gateway to cities farther west in Donetsk region.

Zelenskiy said that Russian commanders were bent on pushing on to the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, farther west in Donetsk region “and as far as (the central city of) Dnipro.”

We will resist and meanwhile prepare the next counter-attack.”

Russia has concentrated on securing control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

Russian forces have besieged Bakhmut since July when they captured two major towns farther north.

Russian troops, spearheaded by the Russian Wagner Group mercenary force, have made incremental gains in nearby villages and fighting has engulfed its northern districts in the past few days.

But Ukrainian military analysts have said the town, protected by a river and wooded areas, has considerable significance in pinning down Russian occupying forces.

“There are no grounds at this time for the Ukrainian military to leave Bakhmut. The town is not surrounded,” military analyst Oleksandr Kovaleno, of the Ukrainian thinktank Information Resistance, told the news site nv.ua.

“Bakhmut plays an important role – it serves as a trap. For nine months it has drawn in the resources and means of the Russian occupying forces and they have been killed in large numbers. It must be regarded not as a fortress, but as a trap.”

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell backed a call from Estonia for the bloc’s members to buy arms jointly to help Ukraine – an approach officials say would be more efficient than EU members placing individual orders.

EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss the plan in Brussels on Monday.

The plan would work by placing large ammunition orders on behalf of multiple member states to speed up procurement and encourage European arms firms to invest in increasing their production capacities.

Borrell said he would table plans at the meeting to use the existing €3.6bn (£3.2bn) European peace facility for the EU to procure ammunition jointly on the model of the procurement of vaccines during the Covid crisis.

In a panel discussion with Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in Munich on Sunday, Borrell said:

I completely agree with the Estonian prime minister’s proposal, we are working on that and it will work.”

However he warned it would not solve Kyiv’s urgent need for more ammunition now.

This cannot be solved by going into joint procurement … because any procurement that comes to the market will come at the end of a queue of a long list of orders already passed by the member states.”

Borrell said the Estonian idea would work in the medium term, but he believes the urgency of the shortages is such that it requires EU countries to draw on existing stocks. “We have to use what member states have,” he said.

Much more has to be done and much quicker. There is still a lot to be done. We have to increase and accelerate our military support. It currently takes almost 10 months for the European army to buy a bullet for the calibre of 155mm, almost one year, and almost three years to buy an air-to-air missile. This is not in accordance with the war situation in which we live.”

The war with Ukraine will be over unless the EU finds a way in weeks to speed up the provision of ammunition to Ukraine, the EU foreign affairs chief has warned.

Josep Borrell told ministers at a Munich security conference on Sunday:

Much more has to be done and much quicker.

We have to increase and accelerate our military support to Ukraine.

The first and most urgent thing that a geopolitical Europe has to do, is to arm Ukraine.

… This shortage of ammunition has to be solved quickly. It’s a matter of weeks.”

Borrell also called for an extraordinary meeting on 7-8 March where he will propose to accelerate the supply processes.

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments as they unfold.

The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, earlier told ministers at a Munich Security Conference on Sunday that the war could be over if the EU cannot increase its supply of ammunition to Ukraine.

Borrell has backed a call from Estonia for the bloc’s members to buy arms jointly to help Ukraine by placing large ammunition orders on behalf of multiple member states to speed up procurement and encourage European arms firms to invest in increasing their production capacities.

EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss the plan in Brussels on Monday.

It’s 7.30am in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• Ukraine’s military is inflicting “extraordinarily significant” losses on Russian forces near the town of Vuhledar in the eastern Donbas region, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday in his nightly video address. Zelenskiy referred to several towns in Donbas, saying “the more losses Russia suffers there … in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Marinka, Kreminna – the faster we will be able to end this war with Ukraine’s victory”.

• Ukrainian troops are preparing to defend one of the possible targets of a new Russian offensive in the eastern Donetsk region as Russia threatens to capture Bakhmut. Ukrainian soldiers near the small town of Siversk described being outgunned. “If they occupied Bakhmut, then we would be semi-encircled, because on the left side we have the Siverskyi Donets river, and the enemy will advance from the right, and it is possible to cut us off if they reach the Bakhmut highway,” said the deputy Siversk battalion commander.

• Three people were killed by shelling near the southern Ukrainian city of Berislav on Sunday morning, according to local officials. The regional military administration said Russian forces struck the village of Burgunka with “massive artillery fire” and that one of the shells hit the yard of a family home.

• The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, said the war could be over if the EU cannot increase its supply of ammunition to Ukraine. “We are in urgent war mode,” he said. “This shortage of ammunition has to be solved quickly.” Borrell backed a call for the bloc’s members to buy arms jointly to help Ukraine but warned it would not solve Kyiv’s urgent need for more ammunition now.

• The US and Ukraine are “still having discussions” amid pressure to supply F-16 jets. The US ambassador to the United Nations indicated on Sunday that the White House could reverse its refusal to supply F-16 jets to Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have urged US Congress members to press Biden’s administration to send the jetfighters to Kyiv, saying the aircraft would boost Ukraine’s ability to hit Russian missile units with US-made rockets, lawmakers said.

• Zelenskiy and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke by phone on Sunday and discussed strategies, including what the Ukrainian leader described as joint decisions ahead of this week’s anniversary of Russia’s invasion of his country. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said he thanked the French president “for understanding our needs and for expressing jointly that we cannot waste any opportunity or a single week in our defence against Russian aggression … We also discussed important decisions that we are planning for this week – for our year of resistance.”

• France has said it would deliver the AMX-10 light armoured vehicles it has promised to Ukraine “by the end of next week”. Macron added in an interview that he wants Russia to lose the war but he does not want to see it “crushed”.

• China may be on brink of supplying arms to Russia, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has warned. Blinken told US networks that the US had information China was considering whether to give Russia assistance, possibly including guns and weapons, for the Ukraine war..

• The Polish prime minister said he and US President Joe Biden will discuss the possibility of increasing US troop presence in Poland and making it more permanent. “We are in the process of discussion with President Biden’s administration about making their (troop) presence more permanent and increasing them,” Mateusz Morawiecki said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.