Russia-Ukraine war latest updates: Zelensky pleads for more potent weapons

“The International Olympic Committee’s attempt to get Russian athletes back to compete and participate in the Olympics is an attempt to tell the world that terror can allegedly be something acceptable,” Zelensky said during his nightly address Sunday.

He also reiterated his plea for Western nations to supply Ukraine with more potent weapons, including the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, to help Kyiv defend against Russian attacks from places far from the front line. Kyiv has long argued that it needs the U.S.-made weapons to strike Russian targets in places such as Crimea — which have been used to launch missile and drone attacks across Ukrainian cities, with devastating effect. Washington has so far resisted Kyiv’s calls, concerned that providing Ukraine with a weapon capable of hitting targets inside Russia could escalate the nearly year-long conflict.

“We have to make time our weapon. We must speed up the events, speed up the supply and opening of new necessary weaponry options for Ukraine,” Zelensky said during his address.

Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

4. From our correspondents

It’s a staggering number of cases, one that would overwhelm any judicial system anywhere, legal experts say. But Ukraine’s prosecutor general Andriy Kostin has vowed to investigate all of them and to bring to trial all those in which enough evidence can be gathered. President Volodymyr Zelensky has made justice for the victims of war crimes one of his conditions for eventual peace with Russia. The issue is as important for Ukraine as defeating the Russians militarily if Russia is to be deterred forever from attacking Ukraine, Kostin said.

“We have to win in both battles — in the fight for our territory and in the fight for justice,” he said in an interview.

The battle for justice could prove just as challenging as the fight for land.