President Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies to provide Ukraine with better air defences, including fighter jets after a barrage of Russian missiles hit residential areas.

“Air defence, a modern air force – without which effective air defence is impossible – artillery, armoured vehicles.

“Everything that is necessary to provide security to our cities, to our villages, both in the hinterland and on the front lines,” Mr Zelensky listed in a video message on Friday night.

He condemned the attack in Uman in the early hours of Friday that killed at least 23 people, including four children.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a mother and he three-year-old daughter were also killed by night-time Russian shelling.

Officials said that missiles hit ten residential buildings in the central Ukrainian city of Uman in the Cherkasy region.

One block of flats was destroyed. Eighteen people were injured in the attack, nine of whom were being treated in hospital.

“Russian evil can be stopped by weapons – our defenders are doing it. And it can be stopped by sanctions – global sanctions must be enhanced,” Mr Zelensky wrote on Twitter earlier in the day.

The Ukrainian president has long called for more weapons, a tightening of international punitive measures against Russia and better monitoring of the implementation of the export restrictions imposed so far.

The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, on Friday, gave the total number of missiles fired at Ukraine during the night as 23.

Of these, 21 were shot down, along with two drones.

The Ukrainian military said cruise missiles were also fired near the capital Kyiv, with air defences downing 11.

Shelling in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk has killed seven and injured 19, local authorities reported on Friday.

Among other things, a large taxi used to transport several people caught fire and burnt out completely due to the Ukrainian rocket fire, the local authorities said.

Elsewhere, Defence Minister Oleksii Resnikov said preparations for Ukraine’s long-announced spring offensive are nearing completion.

(dpa/NAN)