KYIV — Ukrainian forces have recaptured 745 sq km of territory in the southeastern Oleksandrivka sector since the start of the year, Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, as the Ukrainian leader beseeched the United States to boost his country’s urgently needed interceptor missile supplies to stop surging Russian ballistic missile attacks.The operation, which Ukraine says began in January, has brought 26 settlements back under Ukrainian control across the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, the president said. He said the offensive was carried out “with precision – exactly as planned”.Zelensky also said on Telegram that his forces struck Russia’s Novorossiysk naval base overnight with drones, missiles and unmanned boats.Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar region where the port city is located, said a “massive” wave of Ukrainian attacks had targeted the area and killed at least two people, including an eight-year-old child.Earlier, two of Russia’s biggest grain terminals at the southern Black Sea port city suspended operations as a result of the overnight Ukrainian drone strikes, industry sources told Reuters.It comes despite Ukraine agreeing to pause drone strikes on oil tankers using the Novorossiysk port after a request from US Vice President JD Vance, according to a report in the Financial Times citing Ukrainian officials.Zelensky told CNN in an interview thatUkraine has only a tenth of the interceptor missiles it urgently needs to stop Russian attacks and that his days are spent in “millions” of phone calls in opaque deal-making with allies for more.Russian ballistic attacks have surged in recent weeks, hitting the capital Kyiv particularly hard, as Moscow exploits Ukraine’s near-zero stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles. Zelensky said a tenth of the US current stockpile would be enough to stop all Russian ballistic missile attacks, but 5 percent would be enough to get Ukraine through the winter.“This year we have two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025,” he said. “Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before.” He added that if the US “sell us 5%, we will go through the winter and save people’s lives. If they can sell us 10%, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles. I have 1%.”There is a global shortage of the missiles due to the US war with Iran, where the US and Gulf states used dozens to tackle Iranian missile and low-cost drone attacks. The shortage is costing Ukraine most acutely, where cities some nights appear defenseless to Moscow’s rocket assaults.Zelensky gave a rare window into his personal efforts daily to secure more interceptors, that involved deal-making he preferred to keep private. “This is what I live each day: from 1% to 5%. I have some months, and million phone calls … I try to exchange something to missiles … I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s outside of the law. But I can’t speak about it.”Zelensky said there were still doubts about how President Donald Trump’s apparent commitment to letting Ukraine build its own Patriot interceptor missiles would come to fruition.Trump, on the sidelines of the NATO Ankara summit, said he would permit Ukraine to get a license to manufacture the complex interceptors themselves, but days later said he was unsure of the idea. The manufacturers of the Patriot missile systems have sent officials to Kyiv to discuss the idea, but results remain elusive.Zelensky said he was beseeching the White House directly, through calls, messages and indirectly through allies, to boost their Patriot assistance. But he was otherwise reluctant to provide details on his recent interactions with the Trump administration.He confirmed he held a phone call with Vice President Vance recently, but declined to say, as reported by the Financial Times, whether Vance requested Ukraine stop attacks on a Russian oil port in the Black Sea that were harming US companies and risking a surge in global energy prices.Kyiv has also presented new proposals for the Trump-led peace process that has appeared moribund in recent months. Zelensky declined to provide details but said: “We need more involvement of the American side to the peace plan. I’m thankful to the team of President Trump that they want to continue. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin doesn’t want to stop this war now and (there’s) not enough pressure on him now.”He also rejected the idea of Ukraine conceding the remaining territory in the Donbass that Putin seeks to conquer, saying that security guarantees remained key for Kyiv.
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