DAVOS
\nUkraine\u2019s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday said his country\u2019s priority for 2024 was to gain control over its skies, as Russia\u2019s full-scale assault enters its third year.
\nHis comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos came just hours after Russian drone and missile attacks overnight wounded 20 people across Ukraine.
\nThe barrage left massive craters in the southern city of Odesa where AFP journalists saw residential buildings charred in the wake of the assault.
\nRescue workers hauled out vulnerable residents on stretchers from housing blocs that had had their windows blown out, footage from emergency services showed.
\n\u201cIn 2024, of course the priority is to throw Russia from the skies,\u201d Kuleba said in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
\n\u201cBecause the one who controls the skies will define when and how the war will end,\u201d he added.
\nKyiv has long called on the West to deliver advanced fighter jets to support its troops entrenched in the south and east of the country.
\nResponding to those calls, President Emmanuel Macron announced this week that France would deliver a new batch of around 40 SCALP long-range cruise missiles as well as hundreds of bombs as Kyiv fights the Russian invasion.
\nBut even that pledge is limited compared to the range of munitions that Russian forces have recently been raining down across Ukraine.
\nOfficials in Kyiv have seen a steep rise in civilian casualties since December, as Moscow intensifies air attacks, reversing a downward trend seen earlier in 2023, the United Nations has warned.
\nAnd officials in the southern region of Kherson said one person had been killed and another injured by Russian shelling.
\nKyiv said the overnight Russian attack consisted of 20 Iranian-designed drones targeting southern Ukraine, but said its air defense systems had destroyed all but one.
\nThe conflict has ground to a stalemate after Ukraine\u2019s long-awaited counter-offensive last year failed to punch through Russian positions.
\nKuleba called for patience among Ukraine\u2019s key Western backers, insisting that with the right support, Ukraine could be victorious.
\n\u201cWe are fighting a powerful enemy, a very big enemy that doesn\u2019t sleep,\u201d said Kuleba. \u201cIt takes time.
\n\u201cWe defeated them on the land in 2022. We defeated them in the sea in 2023 and we are completely focused on defeating them in the air in 2024,\u201d he told a discussion panel at the forum in Switzerland.
\nHis comments echo remarks by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who on Tuesday said that Ukraine \u201cmust gain air superiority\u201d to enable \u201cprogress on the ground.\u201d
\nVarious NATO countries are currently training Ukrainian pilots on American-made F-16 fighter jets. Denmark said earlier this month it would transfer 19 F-16s in the second quarter of this year.
\nWashington had previously resisted allowing the jet transfers for fear of being deemed by Moscow a direct belligerent in the Ukraine war.
\nRussia meanwhile on Wednesday announced that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would travel to New York next week for a meeting of the United Nations\u2019 Security Council.
\nAsked whether Lavrov would attend the 23 January Security Council debate on the Middle East in person, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said \u201cyes,\u201d TASS reported on Wednesday.
\nRussia has also been weathering increased fatal Ukrainian strikes, particularly in border regions where officials and residents are bolstering defenses.
\n\u201cThe situation is, of course, difficult at the moment,\u201d a member of a volunteer defense group, Oleg Gerasimov told AFP in the border city of Belgorod.
\n\u201cBut we are hoping, believing, that the threat to our city and the whole country will end in the very near future,\u201d he added.
\nLate last year, more than two dozen people were killed in a series of strikes on the city \u2014 the deadliest attack on Russian soil so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAVOS Ukraine\u2019s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday said his country\u2019s priority for 2024 was to gain control over its skies, as Russia\u2019s full-scale assault enters its third year. His comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos came just hours after Russian drone and missile attacks overnight wounded 20 people across Ukraine. The barrage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-381487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n