Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed directly to NATO leaders Thursday for just “one percent” of the alliance’s combined fighter jets and tanks to help the country repel Russia’s month-long invasion.

“Ukraine needs military assistance — without restrictions — as Russia uses, without restrictions, its entire arsenal against us,” Zelensky said in a video address to the leaders of the Western alliance.

NATO leaders, including President Biden, are meeting in Brussels to discuss next steps in their support of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader repeated his request for NATO nations to resupply Kyiv’s military hardware.

“You have thousands of fighter jets! But we haven’t been given any yet,” Zelensky said. “You have at least 20,000 tanks! Ukraine asked for one percent — one percent — of your tanks to be given or sold to us. But we do not have a clear answer yet.”

“We asked for tanks, so that we can unblock our cities that are now dying: Mariupol, Berdyansk, Melitopol, and others,” he continued. “Cities where Russia is keeping hundreds of thousands of people hostage and artificially creating famine.”

“We just want to save our people,” Zelensky said. “We want to survive.”

Ukraine’s request for additional fighter jets has been a hotly contested issue among the NATO alliance. Ukraine flies some of the same Soviet-era MiG fighter jets that are still in service in Slovakia and Poland, both NATO member states. But both countries — and the alliance as a whole — have expressed concerns that providing fighter jets to Ukraine will be seen as an act of war by Russia.

US officials have repeatedly claimed that additional fighter jets would not significantly augment the Ukrainian air force, which has continued to successfully engage Russian jets in Ukrainian airspace for the past month.

Zelensky said Thursday, however, that his fleet of fighter jets is dwarfed by the Russian air force, which continues to carry out airstrikes against civilian targets.

“You see the consequences today — how many people were killed, how many peaceful cities were destroyed.”

He asked again for one percent of the alliance’s fighter jets and armor, adding that Ukraine could not simply buy the specialized weaponry on the open market without NATO’s blessing.

“The worst thing during the war is not having clear answers to requests for help.”

“I’m sure you already understand that Russia does not intend to stop in Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president then asked the eastern members of the NATO alliance — Poland and the Baltic states — if they had faith that the alliance would protect them from Russia, as it is obligated to do under Article 5 of the alliance.

“Do you have confidence that Article 5 can work?” he asked.

“‘Budapest’ hasn’t worked for us already,” he said, referencing the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine agreed to surrender its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees from the United States, United Kingdom and Russia.

Zelensky’s request comes as Ukrainian forces reportedly earned hard-fought victories in a counter-offensive outside Kyiv Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that Ukrainians are “definitely becoming more effective on the battlefield.”

“We now have indications that they’ve actually pushed Russian forces further to the east [of Kyiv],” he told Fox News. “So the Russian forces had advanced somewhere between 20 to 30 kilometers (12 to 18 miles) to the east of Kyiv. The Ukrainians, just in the last 24 hours or so, pushed them back to about 40 to 50 kilometers (24 to 31 miles) away.”

“In the north of Kyiv, what we’re seeing is the Russians take a real defensive posture. They are no longer trying to advance. They’re simply going back now into that defense,” he added.