Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities in a major attack yesterday, with one strike on an apartment building in the central city of Dnipro leaving at least five people dead.
ideos shared by Ukrainian officials on social media showed smoke billowing from the flattened multi-story building, as rescuers worked to dig out residents from the rubble.
More than three dozen people were wounded in the attack, including seven children. One of them, a nine-year-old girl, was in critical condition last night.
Earlier, massive explosions woke residents of Kyiv in what Ukraine’s air force said was “most likely” a ballistic missile attack.
‘We absolutely agree that Ukraine does need tanks’
Ukraine lacks the capability to detect ballistic missiles, so Kyiv residents heard sirens only after the attack.
The city’s mayor said missile fragments landed in a non-residential part of the city, sparking a fire that caused no casualties.
In Lviv and Kharkiv, regional authorities reported missile strikes targeting infrastructure.
The attacks came as Nato countries plan to send heavy battle tanks to Ukraine, answering a long-standing request from Kyiv as its fight against Russia’s invasion approaches the one-year mark.
British prime minister Rishi Sunak told Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky in a phone call yesterday that his country would provide Challenger 2 tanks, along with additional artillery systems.
Ukraine hopes the move will encourage other allies to follow suit. In particular, Kyiv has sought German-made Leopard 2 tanks — more than 2,000 of which are scattered across Europe.
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The attack came in the dead of night, when residents were in their beds
Poland indicated last Wednesday it intends to transfer a company of Leopard 2s to Ukraine as part of a broader package supported by an international coalition. But the re-export of the German-made tanks requires approval from Berlin, which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has not yet granted.
The United States is similarly hesitant.
“We absolutely agree that Ukraine does need tanks,” Laura Cooper, the US deputy assistant secretary of defence, told reporters earlier this month.
The US, Germany and France have agreed to send advanced infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine. These vehicles — the US-made Bradley, the German Marder and the French AMX-10RC — are lighter than main battle tanks and meant to transport soldiers, scout out the positions of enemy troops and fire on enemy armoured vehicles.
Ukrainian officials expressed gratitude for the donations — but asked for heavy tanks as well.
Kyiv’s forces have so far been using Soviet-era tanks such as the T-64 and T-72.
It’s unclear how many tanks Britain will send and when they might arrive
The US has partnered with the Netherlands to provide refurbished T-72s, but Cooper said concerns remained about the ability of Ukrainian forces to look after Abrams tanks — the top US model.
“Certainly we know that the Abrams tank, in addition to being a gas guzzler, is quite challenging to maintain,” she said.
Yesterday’s announcement by the UK marks a significant escalation of military aid as Ukrainian forces seek to take back more territory and fend off a potential springtime offensive by Russia. Western allies had previously held back, partly out of fear of provoking a broader confrontation with Russia.
It’s unclear how many tanks Britain will send and when they might arrive. Previous reports indicated Britain would hand over about 10 tanks.
Russia’s UK embassy warned the move would “only serve to intensify combat operations,” and that the tanks would become “legitimate large-scale targets”.
The UK’s action is “entirely symbolic,” said retired colonel Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Centre for Strategic & International Studies’ International Security Program.
“Britain only has about 250 of those tanks, so it cannot send many without severely weakening its own forces.”
“Always strong support of the UK is now impenetrable,” Zelensky tweeted yesterday, adding that he had thanked Sunak “for the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners.”
Since Ukrainian forces took back large swaths of territory from Russia in sweeping counteroffensives this fall, the war has essentially stalled along a front line stretching hundreds of miles across eastern and southern Ukraine.
Last month Zelensky told Western leaders gathered in Latvia that tanks would help Ukraine achieve more success on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Russia has pummelled Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure in repeated attacks since October, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power, heat or water as winter took hold.
“Eternal memory to all whose lives were taken by Russian terror!” said the Ukrainian president in a Telegram post after the Dnipro strike on Saturday. “The world must stop this evil.”
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A Challenger 2 main battle tank
The Challenger 2
The Challenger 2 is the British Army’s main battle tank, in service since 1994. Designed to destroy other armoured vehicles, the tank has heavy armor and a 120mm rifled tank gun, as well as a 7.62mm chain gun and a separate mounted machine gun.
The British used it in military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.
The tank is built to cross open terrain, which could prove especially useful in the fields of eastern Ukraine. It is capable of carrying out strong, rapid advances that shock enemy forces.
“With Nato-type tanks, we will move towards victory much faster,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a statement posted to the ministry’s Telegram channel.
Analysts say the Challenger 2 can be difficult to use and maintain, though.
The tanks “would provide quite a lot of logistical challenges to the Ukrainians because these are very heavy vehicles,” said Sonny Butterworth, an analyst at Janes, the intelligence firm.
“They’re going to have to be able to support these vehicles in the field appropriately, otherwise they won’t be able to deploy them to where they need to go.”
Ukrainian troops will need to be trained to operate the tanks, and they’ll need lots of spare parts and ammunition, Butterworth said.
Complicating matters, the Challenger 2 uses a rifled gun that differs from the NATO standard.
Sunak told Zelensky he and his government would work “intensively” with international partners to send more military aid, the Downing Street statement said.
Defence ministers from dozens of countries will gather on Friday for a meeting of the US-led Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Germany, where they will discuss Ukraine’s defence needs.
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