US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has said the US will soon announce an additional 2.3 billion dollars (£1.8 billion) in security assistance for Ukraine, to include anti-tank weapons, interceptors and munitions for Patriot and other air defence systems.

The announcement came as Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov met Mr Austin at the Pentagon.

And it marks a strong response to pleas from Kyiv for help in battling Russian forces in the Donetsk region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Russia had dropped more than 800 powerful glide bombs in Ukraine in the last week alone.

And he urged national leaders to relax restrictions on the use of Western weapons to strike military targets inside Russia.

In particular, he said Ukraine needs the “necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs, including Russian combat aircraft, wherever they are”.