Ukraine on Tues­day re­newed its ap­peal to West­ern coun­tries for fight­er jets to help frus­trate Moscow’s in­va­sion, but the Unit­ed States and its NA­TO al­lies and part­ners are more con­cerned about Kyiv’s needs for large amounts of am­mu­ni­tion as the war with Rus­sia is set to en­ter its sec­ond year.

Ahead of the meet­ing of the Ukraine con­tact group at NA­TO head­quar­ters in Brus­sels, Ukraine made its re­quire­ments clear. De­fense Min­is­ter Olek­siy Reznikov, when asked what mil­i­tary aid his coun­try is seek­ing now, showed re­porters an im­age of a fight­er jet.

Ukraine Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy pushed hard for com­bat planes last week when he vis­it­ed Lon­don, Paris and Brus­sels on just his sec­ond for­eign trip since Rus­sia in­vad­ed on Feb. 24, 2022. His plea came days af­ter West­ern al­lies pledged to pro­vide Kyiv with tanks.

The Unit­ed States has said no to fight­er jets for Ukraine. The Unit­ed King­dom is as­sess­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty. On Tues­day, Dutch De­fense Min­is­ter Ka­jsa Ol­lon­gren said pro­vid­ing jets “has to be part of the con­sid­er­a­tion.”

What NA­TO al­lies have on their mind, though, is how to keep up a steady sup­ply of am­mu­ni­tion to Ukraine with­out de­plet­ing their own stock­piles.

Ac­cord­ing to some es­ti­mates, Ukraine is fir­ing up to 6,000-7,000 ar­tillery shells each day, around a third of the dai­ly amount that Rus­sia is us­ing.

NA­TO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg warned Mon­day that Ukraine is us­ing up am­mu­ni­tion much faster than its al­lies can sup­ply it.

Moscow’s forces have been press­ing in the east of Ukraine while bol­ster­ing their de­fen­sive lines in the south. The war has been large­ly sta­t­ic dur­ing the win­ter months, though both sides are ex­pect­ed to launch of­fen­sives when the weath­er im­proves.

Putin was hop­ing West­ern sup­port for Kyiv would fiz­zle out, U.S. De­fense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin told the meet­ing.

But he said the con­tact group would “help Ukraine hold an ad­vance dur­ing the spring coun­terof­fen­sive” and would keep plan­ning for Kyiv’s long-term needs.

“To­day’s meet­ing comes at a crit­i­cal time,” Austin said. “The Krem­lin is still bet­ting that it can wait us out.”

The Rus­sians ap­pear short on re­sources for any ma­jor of­fen­sive at the mo­ment, the U.K. Min­istry of De­fense said Tues­day. “Over­all, the cur­rent op­er­a­tional pic­ture sug­gests that Russ­ian forces are be­ing giv­en or­ders to ad­vance in most sec­tors, but that they have not massed suf­fi­cient of­fen­sive com­bat pow­er on any one ax­is to achieve a de­ci­sive ef­fect,” it tweet­ed.

Ger­man De­fense Min­is­ter Boris Pis­to­rius said that find­ing am­mu­ni­tion and air de­fens­es is “much more im­por­tant at the mo­ment than the dis­cus­sion about fight­er jets.”

Pis­to­rius told re­porters that get­ting pi­lots up to speed on new air­craft and “train­ing just to fly them takes sev­er­al months, nev­er mind teach­ing the abil­i­ties need­ed to de­ploy the weapons sys­tems.”

He said Ukraine’s part­ners “should fo­cus on what is now at cen­ter stage, par­tic­u­lar­ly in view of a Russ­ian of­fen­sive that is ap­par­ent­ly tak­ing place.”

He said Ger­many has signed a deal to pro­duce am­mu­ni­tion for self-pro­pelled, an­ti-air­craft guns it pro­vid­ed to Ukraine, af­ter Kyiv ran in­to prob­lems find­ing mu­ni­tions else­where.

That am­mu­ni­tion is cru­cial for Kyiv to counter Russ­ian at­tacks, es­pe­cial­ly on Ukraine’s pow­er in­fra­struc­ture aimed at dis­rupt­ing heat­ing and drink­ing wa­ter sup­ply.

Stoltenberg on Mon­day urged Ukraine’s West­ern al­lies to step up their mil­i­tary sup­port.

Asked when he ex­pects Rus­sia’s so-called spring of­fen­sive to be­gin, Stoltenberg said that “the re­al­i­ty is that we have seen the start al­ready.”

“For me, this just high­lights the im­por­tance of tim­ing. It’s ur­gent to pro­vide Ukraine with more weapons,” he told re­porters in Brus­sels.

Stoltenberg said that NA­TO sees “no sign what­so­ev­er that Pres­i­dent Putin is prepar­ing for peace” and that arm­ing Ukraine more quick­ly could save lives by bring­ing a quick­er end to the con­flict.

In Ukraine, the coun­try’s pres­i­den­tial of­fice said Tues­day Russ­ian shelling killed at least three civil­ians and wound­ed an­oth­er eight over the pre­vi­ous 24 hours as fight­ing con­tin­ued in the south and east.

Russ­ian forces shelled 17 towns and vil­lages in the Donet­sk re­gion. Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. “The Rus­sians are de­stroy­ing every­thing in their path,” he said.

Ukraine of­fi­cials al­so re­port­ed in­tense shelling and air strikes in Luhan­sk province, while in the south Russ­ian forces shelled the city of Kher­son 13 times over 24 hours, de­stroy­ing a rail­way and res­i­den­tial build­ings.

Tara Copp in Brus­sels con­tributed to this sto­ry.

By LORNE COOK

BRUS­SELS (AP)