Western leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday will agree to strengthen their forces in Eastern Europe and increase military aid to Ukraine as the Russian assault on its neighbour entered its second month.

U.S. President Joe Biden and world leaders opened a trio of emergency summits on Thursday with a sober warning from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that the alliance must boost its defenses to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “respond to a new security reality in Europe.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged them to go further and repeated his call for a no-fly zone over his country, where thousands of people have been killed, millions become refugees, and cities pulverised since Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed his invasion on Feb. 24.

In Mariupol, the southern port city that has come to symbolise Ukraine's plight, people were burying their dead and queuing for rations in pauses in the bombing.

One woman there, Viktoria, buried her 73-year-old stepfather Leonid, killed when the car ferrying him to a hospital was blown up 12 days ago.

"This guy had taken a seat instead of me and then they all got blown up in that car," she told Reuters, pointing to the mangled remains of the vehicle.

"It could have been me," she sobbed.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been hiding in basements in Mariupol with no running water, food, medicine or power.

Ukrainian officials say they have pushed back the invaders in other areas, including around the capital Kyiv, thwarting Russian hopes of a swift victory.

In Brussels, Western leaders will warn Putin his country will pay "ruinous" costs for invading Ukraine during a series of NATO, G7 and EU summits over Thursday and Friday. U.S. President Joe Biden is among those attending.

Zelensky urges unlimited military assistance

President Zelensky also asked members of the alliance if they were confident that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty would work if Russia attacked Nato. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on a Nato member country is an attack on all of Nato.

And he called on the alliance not to declare to Ukraine that its army does not meet Nato standards:
The only thing I demand of you after such a month of war is, please, never tell us that our army does not meet Nato standards