Zelensky said the meeting of top officials ordered the preparation of a “humanitarian plan”.
Ukraine's top commander said Monday that Kiev controls about 1,000 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Russia's Kursk region, his first public statement since Ukraine launched its largest cross-border attack in nearly two and a half years of large-scale war.
As Russia continues to struggle to repel the invasion, seven days after it began, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy released a video clip of Oleksandr Syrskyi, the head of his armed forces, reporting on the fighting.
“We continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region. Currently, we control about 1,000 square kilometers of the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Zelensky said the meeting of top officials had ordered the preparation of a “humanitarian plan” for the area.
The acting governor of Russia's Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, said Ukraine had taken control of 28 settlements and that the incursion was about 12 kilometers deep and 40 kilometers wide.
In a statement, the Ukrainian leader said the Defense Ministry and diplomats have been instructed to present a list of “necessary actions” needed to obtain permission from Kiev's Western allies to use long-range weapons to strike Russia.
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov earlier on Monday called on Paris to lift the ban on Western weapons attacks on military targets in Russia, the Ukrainian minister said during a telephone conversation with his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu.
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