Russia attacks kill 26, Zelenskiy seeks support at NATO
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Russian drones, missiles and artillery have killed at least 26 civilians and injured more than 200 others in Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought guarantees of further Western help at a NATO summit.
Zelenskiy joined Western leaders for the summit in The Hague and is keen to lock in additional military support for Ukraine, as recent direct peace talks have made no progress on a settlement.
Key US military commitments to Ukraine left over from the Biden administration are expected to run out within months, according to analysts, and there is uncertainty over whether President Donald Trump is willing to provide more.
On the battlefront, a Russian ballistic missile attack on Dnipro hit multiple civilian sites in the central Ukrainian city, killing 17 people and injuring more than 200 others.
“The number of casualties is constantly being updated,” Dnipro’s regional administration head Serhii Lysak wrote on Telegram.
In the nearby town of Samar, an attack killed two people and injured 14, he said.
Meanwhile, a White House official said Trump was scheduled to meet Zelenskiy at some point during the summit, taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The US president pulled out from a hoped-for meeting with Zelenskiy last week, when he left the G7 meeting in Canada early, saying he needed to focus on the crisis in the Middle East.
In comments released by his office, Zelenskiy outlined his three priorities if a meeting with Trump were to take place at the NATO summit.
Firstly, he said he wanted to discuss weapons, saying that during the G7 summit, his aides had given US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent a wish-list of arms including Patriot missile defence systems, which he described as worth “a very large amount”.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine was “ready to find the money for this whole package” rather than requesting it as military aid.
Secondly, he wanted to talk about sanctions on Russia and thirdly about other diplomatic ways of applying greater pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskiy urged all NATO countries to support Ukraine’s defence industry.
He said it was essential that Ukraine lead in drone technology, which has shaped the battlefield and developed at breathtaking pace in the 40 months the war has lasted so far.
“Please, let’s make sure that our defence potential and potential of our partners work for our peace, not for Russia’s madness,” he said.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the US leadership was committed to the alliance.
He added, however, this came with an expectation that European countries and Canada spend more on the military.
The former Dutch prime minister underlined the need for transatlantic co-operation in the defence industry to meet the challenge of rearmament.
The Kremlin accused NATO of being on a path of rampant militarisation and portraying Russia as a “fiend of hell” in order to justify its big increase in defence spending.
Russia denies any plan to attack the military alliance, which boasts 32 members, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “largely a wasted effort” to assure the grouping of this because it was determined to demonise Russia.
“It is an alliance created for confrontation … It is not an instrument of peace and stability,” he said.
with AP
Reuters
