Sawt Falasteen - Zelensky says 'slower' Western supplies threaten counteroffensive

Ukraine launched its pushback against Russian forces in June after stockpiling Western weapons, but has made limited gains as its troops encounter heavily fortified Russian defensive lines.

"All processes are becoming more complicated and slower -- from sanctions to the provision of weapons," Zelensky said in comments published on the presidential website.

"The longer it takes, the more people suffer... If we are not in the sky and Russia is, they stop us from the sky. They stop our counteroffensive," he warned.

His comments came as Moscow held local elections on Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, that have been denounced by Kyiv and international groups as a sham.

"Russia's pseudo-elections in the temporarily occupied territories are worthless," Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a statement, accusing Moscow of "grossly violating" its sovereignty.

Russia said voting was currently underway in the four Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson -- none of which Moscow fully controls -- as well as in Crimea.

- 'War crime' -

Russia continued to pound central and eastern Ukraine with air strikes Friday, with Ukrainian officials posting images of the destruction on social media.

"A Russian aerial bomb killed three civilians in Odradokamyanka -- two women and a man. Four local residents were injured," Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said, calling the attack a "war crime".

Odradokamyanka is about 60 kilometres (40 miles) upstream of Kherson city, on the west bank of the Dnipro river, which was recaptured by Ukraine's forces last November.

A separate Russian strike on Friday targeted President Volodymyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvyi Rig, hitting a police building in the city centre and killing a policeman, Klymenko said.

Photos from the scene showed smoke spewing from the ruins of the building as rescue workers carried an injured person to an ambulance.

"Rescuers of the State Emergency Service pulled out three more from under the rubble. They are in serious condition," he said.

Russia also struck the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine, officials said, while one man was wounded in a rocket attack on Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.

- 'The next step' -

Amidst the strikes, Ukraine has been pressing ahead with a counteroffensive to take back occupied territory in its south and east, although gains have been limited.

Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have frequently hit back at criticism the counteroffensive has been too slow.

"When some partners say: what about the counteroffensive, when will the next step be? My answer is that today our steps are probably faster than new sanctions packages," Zelensky said Friday.

"There is a specific impact of a specific weapon. The more powerful and long-range it is, the faster the counteroffensive is," he said.

Zelensky's request for new arms supplies came a day after top US diplomat Antony Blinken wrapped up his surprise two-day visit to Ukraine, in which he announced $1 billion of new wartime aid.

The United States, which has provided Kyiv with over $40 billion of security assistance since Russia's invasion, announced this week it would also supply Kyiv with depleted-uranium tank rounds.

The Kremlin sharply criticised the move.

- Row with Musk -

A row meanwhile erupted between Kyiv and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who revealed he had prevented Ukraine from using his satellite internet network to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea last year.

Musk said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he had received an "emergency request" from Kyiv to activate the Starlink network over the port of Sevastopol -- where Moscow's Black Sea fleet is based.

"If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation," Musk posted Thursday.

Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak strongly criticised the decision, calling it "more than just a mistake" in a post on X.

Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, has been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes and sabotage attacks as Kyiv tries to retake the peninsula.

On Friday, Russia's FSB security services said they had detained a man on suspicion of plotting to bomb a railway in Crimea, while air defences downed a drone over the north of the peninsula.

U.Shaheen--SF-PST