Zelenskyy, Nausėda and Duda (left to right) at the Three Seas Summit in Lithuania. Photo: Three Seas Summit/RDackus.

Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeated his call for NATO nations to send Ukraine Patriot missile defence systems, saying that the country has “an urgent need of air defence”.

Speaking on stage at the Three Seas Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania on Thursday (11 April), Zelenskyy said of air defence systems that “they exist and should be saving lives”.

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He also struck out against Western leaders who were delaying aid: “Every day Putin strikes, and every day promises rise […] the reality should finally correspond to the words.”

Despite this, he retained a hard line on negotiations with Russia, maintaining that only a full reclamation of Ukraine’s territory would be acceptable.

Zelenskyy was joined on stage by Polish President Andrzej Duda and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda. Both pledged to help Ukraine through aid as best they can.

Nausèda told the audience in response to a journalist’s question that it was “becoming harder and harder to figure out what to transfer as we are running out [of weapons] … when we run out we contribute financially”.

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With this in mind, he said that he would propose to parliament to increase Lithuania’s debt-to-GDP cap in order to increase defence and aid spending, a policy ruled out by the country’s Prime Minister last year.

The three leaders also made it clear that there were no hard feelings about both Poland and Lithuania receiving Patriot systems on loan, with Zelensky taking the opportunity to extol the military evolution of Ukraine.

“At the start of the war we did not have modern western weaponry, [but now] we have started to produce 155mm ammo, we have built drones [and] modern electronic warfare systems,” he said.

The news that the US approved a $138m sale of HAWK Phase III missile system sustainment to Ukraine will also have been encouraging.