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Zelenskiy praises air defence forces after deadly strikes on Kyiv; Ukrainian president also puts forward bill to sanction Iran
The Ukrainian president has praised the country’s air defence forces after Kyiv endured the largest drone attack since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that “most of the lives that could have been taken by the [strikes] were saved” and thanked “each and everyone” of the people who had taken part in defensive operations in the capital.
Two people were killed and three injured in the strikes, which came as Kyiv prepared to celebrate the anniversary of its founding.
The Ukrainian military said 58 of 59 Russian drone strikes across Ukraine were intercepted by aerial defence systems. Most were shot down over Kyiv.
Zelenskiy has put forward a bill that would sanction Russian ally Iran for 50 years due to its role in supplying Moscow with weapons, including hundreds of drones. If passed by Ukraine’s parliament, the bill would stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban the use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday has risen from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
Russian attacks near the eastern city of Bakhmut, the scene of heavy fighting in recent months, abated slightly over the weekend, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military.
Western countries left Belarus no choice but to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons and had better take heed not to “cross red lines” on key strategic issues, a senior Belarusian official was quoted as saying. Alexander Volfovich, state secretary of Belarus’ security council, said it was logical that the weapons were withdrawn after the 1991 Soviet collapse as the United States had provided security guarantees and imposed no sanctions. “Today, everything has been torn down. All the promises made are gone forever,” the Belta news agency quoted Volfovich as telling an interviewer on state television.
The EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, Nabila Massrali, has said Russia “will be held accountable” for attacks on civilian areas. “[Russian] leadership and perpetrators will be held accountable. We remain committed to help Ukraine defend itself,” she wrote on Twitter.
The Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told the BBC that the west’s supplying of weapons to Ukraine risked escalating the conflict to levels not yet seen. Russia had “enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously”, he said.
Russia said its air defence systems destroyed several drones as they approached the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea on Sunday. “Several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tried to approach the territory of the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar Krai,” the region’s emergency officials said on the Telegram messaging channel. “All of them were neutralized, the infrastructure of the plant was not damaged.” It was not possible to verify the report.
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has appointed a panel to investigate US allegations that a Russian ship collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town last year, the presidency said in a statement. The allegations have caused a diplomatic row between the US, South Africa and Russia and called into question South Africa’s non-aligned position on the Ukraine conflict.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
