Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked Western allies for a "clear signal" on his country's NATO membership prospects, on the eve of a key alliance summit in Lithuania.
"Ukraine deserves to be in the alliance. Not now, because now there's war, but we need a clear signal and this signal is needed right now," Mr Zelensky said in a video message posted on the Telegram messaging app.
"The majority of the Alliance stands firmly with us," he added.
"When we applied for membership of NATO, we spoke frankly: de facto, Ukraine is already in the Alliance. Our weapons are the weapons of the alliance. Our values are what the alliance believes in. ... Vilnius must confirm all this."
Mr Zelensky said further weapons supplies for Ukraine in its war against Russia would also be discussed at the summit and added: "I am sure that there could well be positive news regarding weapons for our men from Vilnius."
It comes as the death toll from a Russian attack on a humanitarian aid distribution point in southeastern Ukraine rose to seven today, and two people were killed by Russian shelling in the east, Ukrainian officials said.
Yuriy Malashko, governor of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, said a guided aviation bomb was used in yesterday's attack on a school building being used to distribute aid in the small town of Orikhiv.
Ukrainian emergency services said three bodies were retrieved from under rubble today, bringing the death toll to seven.
Rescue and recovery operations were now complete.
Mr Malashko said 11 people wounded in the attack were being treated in hospital. The General Prosecutor's office said the incident was being investigated as a war crime.
It released images showing a red-brick two-storey building partially collapsed and surround by debris and snapped roof beams.
Orikhiv is near the frontline where Ukrainian forces last month were pushing to recapture heavily fortified positions from Russian forces.
The prosecutor's office said that two people had been killed and three wounded today in Russian shelling of the village of Hostre and the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, denies deliberately targeting civilians.
Ukraine's military is conducting a counteroffensive to try to retake Russian-occupied territory in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Meanwhile, Russia's most senior general, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, was shown ordering subordinates to destroy Ukrainian missile sites in a video released today, his first appearance in public since a failed 24 June mercenary mutiny.
Sitting in a military command room on a white leather seat chairing a meeting with top generals, some on a video call, Mr Gerasimov, 67, was shown giving orders, including to Russia's powerful military intelligence service (GRU).
Mr Gerasimov was told that a Ukrainian missile attack on Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and on the Rostov and Kaluga regions had been thwarted yesterday and discussing how Russia should respond.
The defence ministry said the footage showed Mr Gerasimov at a meeting yesterday. It described him as chief of the general staff of Russia's armed forces and commander of Moscow's forces in Ukraine, the positions he held before the mutiny.
The footage shows that President Vladimir Putin has kept his two most powerful military men, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Mr Gerasimov, in their posts despite demands from mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to sack them.
Mr Prigozhin's 24 June mutiny was aimed at settling scores with Mr Shoigu and Mr Gerasimov, whom he said were incompetent traitors who had pulled the Kremlin chief into a failing war that has laid bare the corruption and rot in Russia's military.
In the video, Mr Gerasimov was shown asking for and listening to a report by Viktor Afzalov, deputy to General Sergei Surovikin in the aerospace forces, who has not been since in public since the mutiny.
It was unclear where Mr Surovikin, who before the rebellion was deputy commander of Russia's forces in Ukraine and who was repeatedly praised by Mr Prigozhin, was.
Nicknamed "General Armageddon" by the Russian media for his reputed ruthlessness, Mr Surovikin is formally commander in chief of the aerospace forces.
"We note that the aerospace forces have coped with the task," Mr Gerasimov was shown as saying.
He then asked the aerospace forces and GRU military intelligence to identify "the storage sites and launch positions of missiles and other enemy strike weapons to plan a preemptive strike".
The footage released by the defence ministry showed the participants of the video call blurred out, though explicitly showed Surovikin's deputy, Afzalov.
