During a meeting with senior U.S. officials, Ukraine handed over a list of targets that Kyiv wants to hit with American long-range ATACMS missiles, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said in an interview with CNN.

"We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect the citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard. We are showing that the airfields that they are using to hit our cities are within the range of deep strikes," Umerov said.

He said Ukraine will continue to insist on lifting restrictions in order to protect Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. "They [the Russians] are killing our citizens. That's why we want to deter them, we want to stop them, we don't want [to] allow their aviation to come closer to our borders to bomb the cities," Umerov said.

Umerov also denied that the dismissal of the Ukrainian Air Force commander was connected to the death of one of Ukraine's best pilots, when an American F-16 fighter crashed just a few days earlier. "I would probably say this is a rotation," Umerov said. "This is two separate issues… at this stage, I would not connect them." Umerov called the death of the pilot "unfortunate" and said that Ukraine is investigating what happened.