Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to attend the emergency virtual meeting scheduled from 12:00 GMT, Berlin said.
According to London, Liz Truss, head of government for a month, should declare that “no one wants peace more than Ukraine. And for our part, we must not falter one iota in our determination to help win”.
Deadly Russian bombardments on a scale not seen in months hit Ukraine on Monday morning, leaving at least 11 dead and 89 injured, according to the latest police report, including five in kyiv, targeted for the first time since 26 June by missiles.
“They are trying to destroy us all, to wipe us off the face of the Earth,” Zelensky reacted on Monday morning as Russian missiles hit Ukrainian cities.
But “Ukraine cannot be intimidated”, he then launched in his evening speech, promising to “repair everything that has been destroyed”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin justified these “massive” bombings by kyiv’s “terrorist” attack the day before against the bridge connecting Russian territory to Crimea (south), the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal said eleven major infrastructures were damaged in eight regions, in addition to the capital.
Ukraine has announced that it will stop its electricity exports to Europe following these strikes, while power cuts affected many regions.
– “Terrorist state” –
These bombardments provoked indignation in the West.
The European Union has considered that they are akin to “war crimes” for which those responsible will have to “account”, calling on Belarus to “not be a party to the brutal aggression carried out by Russia”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced “an unacceptable escalation”.
All the countries of the United Nations met Monday in New York in an emergency General Assembly.
Ukraine’s UN ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Russia of being “a terrorist state that must be deterred in the strongest possible way”.
NATO, which Ukraine aims to join, has condemned “horrible and indiscriminate attacks” against civilian infrastructure and promised its support for kyiv “as long as necessary”, according to its secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.
US President Joe Biden promised Mr Zelensky “advanced systems” for air defense, according to a statement from the White House.
Germany must also urgently deliver a long-promised first anti-aircraft defense system.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told reporters on Monday that he feared that “the events of the past few hours could cause new displacements”.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, more than 7.6 million Ukrainian refugees have been registered as refugees across Europe.
While a number of these people have since returned home, some 4.2 million Ukrainians are affected by temporary protection status within the EU.
These “deliberate strikes by Russia on the whole of Ukrainian territory and against civilians is a profound change in the nature of this war”, for his part commented French President Emmanuel Macron, who summoned an emergency Defense counsel on Monday evening.
– “Total dismantling” –
Mr Putin accused Ukraine on Sunday of having organized the explosion on Saturday morning which destroyed part of the Crimean Bridge, built at great expense and inaugurated in 2018. The attack killed three people.
kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
The Russian president has promised “severe” responses in the event of new Ukrainian attacks against Russia. The strikes “achieved their objective”, assured the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, current number 2 of the Moscow Security Council, went further, promising that Monday’s strikes were only a “first episode” and calling for the “total dismantling of the political regime of Ukraine”.
“Of the 84 Russian missiles fired against Ukraine, 43 were shot down. Of the 24 Russian drones, 13 were shot down,” the Ukrainian president said Monday evening.
Half a dozen explosions were heard in kyiv, with strikes in several neighborhoods including the city center, which notably pulverized a children’s playground in Taras Shevchenko Park. In a nearby street, a missile blasted a crater, with a lifeless body lying under a thermal blanket.
Ukraine said Russia was carrying out the massive strikes out of desperation over its recent setbacks on multiple fronts.
Allied with Moscow but having so far refrained from sending troops to support Moscow, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused kyiv of preparing an attack against his country, adding that Minsk and Moscow would therefore deploy Russian troops. -Belarusians, without specifying their location.
He also accused Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine of preparing “terrorist” attacks and a “military uprising” in Belarus.
