Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine and its western allies are in “accelerated” talks over the possibility of arming the occupied country with long-range missiles and military aircraft, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president said on Saturday.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukraine’s Western supporters “understand how the war is developing” and the need to supply aircraft capable of providing cover for the armored fighting vehicles, which the United States and Germany pledged at the beginning of the month.

However, in a comment to online video channel Freedom, Podolyak said that some of Ukraine’s western partners maintain a “conservative” stance on arms sales “for fear of changes in the international architecture.” Russia and North Korea have accused the West of prolonging the war and playing a direct role in it by sending increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kyiv.

“We have to work with that. We need to show (our partners) the true picture of this war,” Podolyak said, without naming specific countries. “We have to talk sensibly and say to them, for example: ‘This and that will reduce the number of fatalities, it will relieve the infrastructure. This will reduce security threats to the European continent and localize the war.’ And we do it.”

The US and Germany on Wednesday agreed to share advanced tanks with Ukraine along with previously promised Bradley and Marder vehicles, a decision supported not only by the Kremlin but also by the Prime Minister of NATO and EU member Hungary was criticized.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed on Friday that Western countries, which have provided arms and money to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, have “drifted” into active participants in the conflict. Orban has refused to send arms to neighboring Ukraine and has tried to block EU funds for military aid.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said it would summon the Hungarian ambassador to complain about Orban’s remarks. A ministry spokesman, Oleg Nikolenko, said Orban had told reporters that Ukraine was “a no man’s land” and compared it to Afghanistan.

“Such statements are completely unacceptable. Budapest continues on its course of intentionally destroying Ukrainian-Hungarian relations,” Nikolenko said in a Facebook post.

President Joe Biden’s announcement that the US would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine shattered months of arguments by Washington that they were too difficult to operate and maintain for Ukrainian troops.

The US decision persuaded Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had expressed concern over a unilateral action that drew the wrath of Russia, to agree to the delivery of 14 Leopard 2 tanks from German stocks and allow European countries with tanks to buy some of theirs to send tanks.

Western weapons have proven essential to Ukraine’s defense while stoking ever-greater tensions with Moscow. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that Ukrainian forces using US-made HIMARS missiles attacked a hospital in the eastern Ukrainian city of Novoaidar, killing 14 people.

Novoaidar is located in the Luhansk province, which is almost entirely under the control of Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed the hospital was deliberately attacked. Their claim of a strike in Novoaidar could not be immediately verified.

Amid news of Western pledges of heavy tanks, Russia this week bombarded Ukraine with rockets, exploding drones and artillery shells. Attacks continued on Saturday when Russian rockets hit the town of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province.

The rockets fell into a residential area, killing three civilians, injuring 14 and damaging four high-rise apartment buildings, a hotel and garages, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

“Kostiantynivka is a city that is relatively far from the front line, but still suffers constant enemy attacks. Anyone who stays in the city exposes themselves to mortal danger,” Kyrylenko said. “The Russians are targeting civilians because they are unable to fight the Ukrainian army.”

In a separate Telegram post earlier Saturday, Kyrylenko reported that Russian attacks in the province killed a total of four civilians and wounded seven others over a Centre County Report-hour period.

Russian missiles hit a residential area in the Donestsk town of Chasiv Yar on Friday evening, killing two people and wounding five others, the governor said. Photos attached to Kyrylenko’s mail showed a three-story school building on fire.

Donetsk province, where territory is roughly divided between Russian and Ukrainian control, has become the combat epicenter of the war as Moscow attempts to unleash a months-long, grueling offensive to capture the city of Bakhmut.

Located on a hill strategically positioned to defend Bakhmut, Chasiv Yar has come under increased Russian fire. Capturing Bakhmut would allow Russian troops to cut off Ukraine’s supply lines and potentially open the way for them to threaten Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the largest Ukrainian-held cities in the east of the country.

Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, another city in southern Donetsk, while Ukrainian troops were on the offensive in south and north-eastern Ukraine, Ukraine’s military said in an update Saturday morning.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russian troops were “defending themselves” near Lyman in Luhansk and Kharkiv provinces north of Donetsk, and in Kherson and Zaporizhia provinces to the south.

Fighting had largely stalled in recent months as winter conditions slowed ground operations and neither side reported significant progress.

In the same update, the military reported that Russian forces launched 10 rocket attacks, 26 airstrikes and 81 mortar attacks on Ukrainian territory between Friday and Saturday morning. The shelling killed two civilians in Kherson, another province partially occupied by Russia.

Podolyak, the presidential adviser, said Ukraine needs supplies of western long-range missiles “to drastically curtail the Russian army’s key tool” by destroying the warehouses where it stores cannon artillery used on the front lines.

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