Day of hesitation costs people's lives: Zelenskyy on slowing down aid to Ukraine

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this in an interview with The Guardian.

He stressed that it was too early to write Ukraine off and that he remained positive despite all his disappointments.

 “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’” the president said.

However, Zelenskyy is calling on allies to be more urgent, focusing on the intensification of the Russian army's offensive, particularly in the Kharkiv region.

A few hours after the interview, the US administration authorised Ukraine to use some US weapons against targets in the Russian border area around Kharkiv.

"It is a permission that may have been more useful three weeks ago, when Ukrainian intelligence could first see Russian troops gathering across the border in preparation for the assault. This sense of decisions being taken long after Ukraine needed them has been a recurring motif of western policy making over the past two years, and one that has caused much frustration," the publication writes.

Zelenskyy stressed that Ukrainians have a completely different attitude to time: "We feel this price more painfully than our partner countries, because no one in their families died. And I thank God for that. But you don't know what war is until it comes to your house, to your street. Your friend, someone you studied with, or someone you knew, or someone you loved."

The Guardian journalists write that Zelenskyy has a long track record of trying to bring the reality of war to life for foreign bureaucrats who follow it on maps or in the news.

"Sometimes, to understand the price that we are paying, you don’t need just a political will, but also a deeper understanding of the consequences. You have to understand that a day of contemplating, day of decision-making, day of dialogues … takes people’s live," the president said.

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that President Joe Biden had secretly authorised Ukraine to strike targets in Russia with US weapons.