British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged on Saturday to supply tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine amid fresh missile attacks by Moscow on several Ukrainian cities for the first time in nearly two weeks.
Five people were killed and more than 20 wounded in the southeastern city of Dnipro where a Russian missile strike destroyed a section of an apartment building, regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. The photos showed a huge breach in the nine-story building.
Infrastructure facilities in the western region of Lviv and in the northeastern Kharkiv were also hit. The capital, kyiv, was also attacked.
Britain will provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after the prime minister spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, Sunak’s office said in a statement.
It did not say when the tanks would be delivered or how many. British media reported that four British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks will be shipped to Eastern Europe immediately with eight more to follow soon after. They did not cite sources.
Zelenskyy tweeted his thanks to Sunak on Saturday “for decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other allies.”
For months Ukraine has sought to receive heavier tanks, including Abrams tanks from the United States and Leopard 2 tanks from Germany, but Western leaders have been treading carefully.
The Czech Republic and Poland have provided Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukrainian forces. Poland has also expressed its willingness to provide a Leopard tank company, but President Andrzej Duda stressed during his recent visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that the move would only be possible if it is part of a larger international coalition of aid tanks. kyiv.
France said this month it would send AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine, called “light tanks” in French. The United States and Germany announced the same week that they would send Bradley fighting vehicles and Marder armored personnel carriers, respectively, for the first time.
Sunak’s announcement came as Russian forces fired missiles at kyiv and other parts of Ukraine on Saturday, in the first major barrage in days.
In the city of Dnipro, rescuers used a crane to try to evacuate people trapped on the upper floors of the apartment building, some of whom were signaling with their phone flashlights, the deputy head of the presidential office said on Telegram. from Ukraine, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. He also said that there were probably people under the rubble.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported that two Russian missiles hit an infrastructure site on Saturday afternoon, following a similar attack in the morning. Metro suspended its operations amid the attacks, according to its Telegram channel.
Another infrastructure facility was attacked in the western region of Lviv, according to Governor Maksym Kozytskyi.
Air defense systems were also activated in other regions of Ukraine, and as another round of air-raid sirens sounded across the country in the afternoon, regional officials urged local residents to seek shelter.
Vitali Kim, governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, hinted in a Telegram post that some missiles were intercepted over his province.
Previously, there were also explosions on Saturday in the national capital, kyiv. The explosions occurred before the air raid sirens sounded, which was unusual. The explosions likely occurred before warning sirens sounded because the attack was with ballistic missiles, which are faster than cruise missiles or drones.
According to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, Russia attacked kyiv with ballistic missiles launched from the north.
“The ballistics are not easy for us to detect and shoot down,” he told local media. The warning about the missile threat came late due to a lack of radar data and information from other sources.
An infrastructure target was hit in the morning missile attack, according to Ukrainian officials.
Explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district, a residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper river, said the mayor of the capital, Vitali Klitschko. Fragments of a missile landed in a non-residential area of the Holosiivskyi neighborhood on the right bank, and a building in the area caught fire, the councilor added. So far no deaths have been reported.
This was the first attack on the Ukrainian capital since the night of January 1.
On Saturday morning, two Russian missiles hit the city of Kharkiv. The S-300 missile strikes targeted “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (peripheral) region,” Governor Syniehubov said. No casualties have been reported, but emergency blackouts were possible in the city and other settlements in the region, the official said.
In the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, where fighting is most intense, three people were killed in Russian artillery fire on Saturday, Mayor Vitalii Barabash said.
The attacks came amid conflicting reports about the fate of the disputed salt town of Soledar in the east of the country. Russia said its forces seized the town, marking a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating defeats on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Saturday that “heavy battles for Soledar continue.”
Moscow has presented the battle for Soledar and the nearby town of Bakhmut as the key to capturing the eastern Donbas region, which includes the partially occupied provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and as a way to stop the best of Ukrainian forces from prevent them from launching counterattacks elsewhere.
But this goes for both sides, as kyiv claims its staunch defense of eastern strongholds has helped cripple Russian troops.