INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A month since Russia launched its shock invasion, Ukraine's leader pleaded Thursday for NATO to "save" his shattered country with
unrestricted military aid, so its armed forces could transform their dogged defense into attack.While Kyiv and Western intelligence report
battlefield gains against the Russians, the vast scale of civilian suffering was made stark as the UN said more than half of all Ukraine's
children have been driven from their homes.After urging global street protests to denounce the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky told NATO
leaders that Russia had unleashed phosphorus bombs on Ukraine along with indiscriminate shelling of civilians."A month of heroic resistance
A month of the darkest suffering," he said in a video speech to United States President Joe Biden and other alliance leaders, at the first
of three Brussels summits that are expected to tighten the sanctions screws on Russia."To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military
assistance without restrictions," Zelensky said
"In the same way that Russia is using its full arsenal without restrictions against us."At least four people including two children were
killed in Russian strikes in eastern Ukraine, Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gayday said, accusing Russian forces of using phosphorus
haze overnight on Irpil near Kyiv."(Russian President) Vladimir Putin has already crossed the red line into barbarism," British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson said in Brussels.Zelensky wants NATO to help Ukraine go on the offensive with more advanced fighter jets, missile
defense systems, tanks, armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles.Ahead of the summits of NATO, the G7 and the European Union, Ukraine's
only when united."'Grim milestone'Zelensky's appeal came one month to the day after Russian armored vehicles rolled over the border,
than 10 million Ukrainians have fled their homes, as cities have faced sustained Russian bombardment from land, sea and air.The month of war
agency Unicef."This is a grim milestone that could have lasting consequences for generations to come," Unicef chief Catherine Russell
said.UN figures show that more than 3.6 million Ukrainians including 1.8 million children have fled abroad, and more are now displaced
inside Ukraine after harrowing journeys out of cities like Mariupol.In the besieged southern port, Zelensky says nearly 100,000 people are
trapped without food, water or power and enduring fierce shelling by Russian forces.In Zhytomyr, a garrison town west of Kyiv, a Russian
strike flattened the school where Vasiliy Kravchuk's six-year-old son was meant to start at next year."It's hard, it's very hard,"
sobbed the 37-year-old, who works for a tourism organization which is now bereft of tourists."Every day it's 20, 30 times we go to the
It's difficult because my wife is pregnant, I have a little son," says Kravchuk, wearing a bright pink hoodie and rubbing his eyes.Experts
say Russia's once-vaunted military has been bogged down by dogged resistance, logistical problems and low morale and has turned to
are expected to bring pledges of more lethal weapons to Ukraine and more punishing sanctions for Russia's tottering economy.Britain's
I believe the more we can shorten the war, shorten the slaughter in Ukraine," he said.NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the summit will see
leaders agree to "major increases of forces" on the alliance's eastern borders, including four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary,
Romania and Slovakia.Putin had made a "big mistake," Stoltenberg said."He has underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian people, the
bravery of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces."Ukraine's navy said it had struck a Russian naval transport vessel docked in the
Azov Sea near Mariupol.Amateur footage showed plumes of black smoke billowing from a large grey vessel docked next to cranes, after what the
Ukraine navy said was the strike, which AFP could not independently confirm.Putin's regime has introduced draconian censorship laws to
prevent independently verified news about what it calls a "special military operation."Ukrainian resistanceBritish military intelligence
said Ukraine had "probably retaken Makariv and Moschun" near Kyiv and "there is a realistic possibility that Ukrainian forces are now able
to encircle Russian units in Bucha and Irpin."What is clear is that Ukrainian civilians continue to bear the brunt of the war."There's
going to have to be a further, massive scaling up of assistance within Ukraine in the coming weeks," said Michael Ryan, emergencies director
for the World Health Organization."I have never, myself, seen such complex needs, and so quickly in a crisis that has developed so fast," he
fled the country in protest at the war.Russia still has a vital friend in China, which dismissed suggestions that Moscow should be expelled
