Meanwhile, in Brussels, EU leaders were discussing plans to raise €3 billion a year to buy Kyiv weapons by using the earnings from frozen Russian assets.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz backed the scheme, but senior EU diplomats warned opposition from a number of member states, including Hungary, Cyprus and Malta, meant an agreement would not be found immediately.
EU leaders called for new sanctions against Iran, Belarus and North Korea for supplying Moscow with weapons used to target civilians on the first day of their summit in Brussels.
It warned that Tehran “may transfer ballistic missiles and related technology to Russia for use against Ukraine after having supplied the Russian regime with unmanned aerial vehicles, which are used in relentless attacks against the civilian population in Ukraine.”
It came as Russia’s defence ministry boasted that it had started the mass production of three-tonne high-explosive aerial bombs.
Moscow’s air force has been using the powerful munitions, which are converted Soviet-era bombs, to devastating effect because they can be dropped outside of the range of Ukraine’s air-defence systems.
And in a battle of their own, EU leaders clashed over their own radical plans to boost defence spending by common debt at a time when many European capitals are increasingly worried by the prospect of facing a wider conflict with Russia.
Diplomats said France’s Emmanuel Macron wanted to use so-called European Defence Bonds to pay for the largest rearmament of Europe since the end of the Cold War.
But Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands came out in opposition to using debts to cover for EU states not hitting defence spending targets set by Nato.
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