The construction effort reflects the shift in momentum in the two-year war, with Russian forces making gains as Kyiv’s military struggles with dwindling ammunition stocks.
Ukraine failed to make progress last year in a counteroffensive backed by Western-delivered weaponry.
The UK’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that Kyiv is “almost certainly” bolstering its defences with anti-tank barriers known as dragon’s teeth, ditches, trenches and minefields.
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“It is highly likely the expansion of defensive lines will reduce Russia’s ability to advance or exploit tactical gains as part of its ongoing offensive operations,” the ministry said in a defence intelligence update on social platform X.
Ukraine’s ambition to seize back territory from Russia has given way to concerns in Kyiv that the Kremlin could gain significant momentum by the summer unless Nato allies and others step up supplies.
Hold-ups to Western aid – mainly a crucial US$60 billion package from the United States – have left Ukraine’s troops in a vulnerable position, forced to ration ammunition and unable to mount large-scale offensives.
Zelensky’s top general, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said last month that Russia’s capture of the eastern city of Avdiivka was compounded by what he called mistakes by frontline commanders, which resulted in the retreat in the area.
The fall of the city and several nearby villages fuelled fears that Kyiv’s defences may not be able to hold.
Still, Zelensky said his troops had blocked Moscow’s offensive and were stabilising the front line.
“The advance of Russia has been stopped,” Zelensky said in an interview with the French broadcaster BFM TV on Monday.
The current situation on the front was much better than in the past three months, he said, commending the country’s military leadership and troops.
This may change for the negative, however, if Ukraine doesn’t start to get sufficient military aid from the West, he said.
Zelensky’s comments were unexpectedly confident in the light of recent reports.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Ukraine’s east, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said in a Sunday report. Meanwhile, the current deadlock in fighting is “shifting the momentum” in Moscow’s favour, US intelligence agencies told the Senate on Monday.
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Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had downed large numbers of Russian aircraft and “continue to act in a strong manner in the Black Sea”, where Russian military targets have come under repeated attack.
Zelensky also said he believed a Russian missile strike in Odesa while he and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were visiting the port city last week showed that Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin had “taken leave of the real world”.
“Was he aiming at me? That’s not what matters now,” he said. “When you make a cruise missile strike a few hundred metres from a European leader, I think you have to be truly ill.”
The Russian defence ministry said at the time that the strike targeted a “hangar in a commercial port area of Odesa in which crewless cutters were being prepared for combat use by the Ukrainian armed forces”.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse
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