Airstrikes kill at least 18, says Zelenskiy; Turkish parliament OKs Sweden for Nato; Russians attacks probe for areas where Ukraine lacks firepower
At least 18 people were killed and more than 130 wounded in massive Russian airstrikes on Ukraine on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The air raids mostly targeted the two largest cities: the capital, Kyiv, and Kharkiv in the east. Ukraine’s president said more than 200 sites were struck, including 139 dwellings.
Russia’s military is carrying out probing attacks with barrages of missiles and drones in an attempt to find weaknesses in Ukraine’s defences as US funding for security assistance is tied up in Congress, Celeste Wallander, a Pentagon assistant secretary of defence, has said.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had invited Sweden’s prime minister to visit and negotiate his country joining the Nato military alliance, a process that Hungary and Turkey have delayed. Turkey’s parliament, though, voted on Tuesday to accept Sweden as a Nato member.
Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, has made his first appearance since being hospitalised for cancer treatment – a stay he concealed from both the White House and Congress for several days. Austin spoke via video link at the opening of a meeting on military aid for Ukraine. “The security of the entire international community is on the line in Ukraine’s fight. I am more determined than ever to work with our allies and partners to support Ukraine and to get the job done,” Austin said.
Western allies aren’t supplying Ukraine with enough ammunition and air defence missiles, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said in an interview with German media. Russian attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv on Tuesday “clearly show the need to provide more anti air defence systems, as well as more surface-to-air missiles”. As for the ground war, “insufficient quantities of artillery munitions has been a problem from the start”, he said.
Kuleba said he was still in talks with the German government about receiving Taurus cruise missiles, even after the lower house of the German parliament voted a week ago against delivering them. “We’ll never give up,” Kuleba said.
The finance minister of Germany has said it can’t keep up Ukraine’s defence capabilities on its own in the long term and that others will need to increase bilateral contributions.
20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov’s chronicle of the besieged Ukrainian city and the international journalists who remained there after Russia invaded, has been nominated for best documentary at the Oscars.
Poland and the Baltic states were calling for import bans on Russian aluminium and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the European Union’s 13th package of sanctions against Moscow over its Ukraine invasion, a Polish official said.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, insisted life in the Ukrainian capital was “absolutely normal”, just hours after Russian missiles fell on Kyiv and a day before his first meeting with the Ukrainian prime minister.
