West plans more arms for ‘brave’ Ukraine as sirens sound again (wrapup)

More than 50 countries will gather on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss bolstering Ukraine’s air defences, after Moscow launched its most intense missile strikes since the start of the war.

Russian attacks using more than 100 missiles have killed at least 26 people across Ukraine since Monday, when President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called retaliatory strikes against Ukraine for an explosion on a bridge.

Air raid sirens sounded across swaths of Ukraine for a third day on Wednesday and there were reports of some shelling, but no immediate sign of a repeat of the intensive countrywide strikes of the previous two days.

The missiles have mostly targeted civilian electricity and heat infrastructure, while some hit busy roads, parks and tourist sites, including in the centre of downtown Kyiv.

The Ukraine Defence Contact Group, set up by the United States for countries to coordinate military aid for Kyiv, was due to meet on Wednesday ahead of a two-day meeting by NATO defence ministers in Brussels.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia’s missile attacks were a sign of weakness by a country facing the prospect of losing the war.

“The reality is that they’re not able to make progress on the battlefield. Russia is actually losing on the battlefield,” Stoltenberg said.

“Ukraine has the momentum and continues to make significant gains, while Russia is increasingly resorting to horrific and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure.”

Since Monday’s attacks, Germany has sent the first of four planned IRIS-T SLM air defence systems, while Washington said it would speed up the delivery of a promised NASAMS air defence system.

ENERGY CRISIS

EU energy ministers were also meeting in Prague to work out ways to cope with an energy crisis caused by the war.

On Wednesday, Polish pipeline operator PERN said it had detected a leak in one pipe in the Druzhba system that carries oil from Russia to Europe, though it said the cause was probably an accident. Global attention has been focused on the security of Russian energy pipelines to Europe since the main undersea gas pipelines were damaged by suspected sabotage last month.

As his forces have lost ground on the battlefield since September, Putin has escalated the conflict, ordering the call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists, proclaiming the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory and repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he doubted Putin would use a nuclear weapon.

Putin is a “rational actor who has miscalculated significantly”, Biden said in a CNN interview, saying he believed the Russian president wrongly expected his invading troops to be welcomed.

Asked how realistic he believed it would be for Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon, Biden responded: “Well, I don’t think he will.”

NATO’s Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday the military alliance had not noticed any change in Russia’s nuclear posture.

BLASTS IN SOUTH

In the latest reports from the battlefield, Ukraine’s military said its forces drove Russian troops out of several settlements on the west bank of the Dnipro River, near the Russian-occupied town of Beryslav in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainians broke through Russia’s front line in the area at the start of October and have been advancing to try to cut off thousands of Russian troops from supply and escape routes across the river.

Russian news media reported explosions in Kherson and Melitopol in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.

Also in the south, Russian missiles destroyed buildings in the Zaporizhzhia region overnight though there were no reports of casualties, regional Governor Oleksandr Starukh said.

Video footage released by Ukrainian emergency services showed a family being rescued from the rubble of a flattened building following what it said was a missile strike in Zaporizhzhi. Reuters could not independently verify the location of the video or date it was filmed.

Ukraine’s sixth largest city, Zaporizhzhia is still controlled by Ukraine although Moscow claims to have annexed the entire surrounding province. The city has come under nightly Russian attacks since the annexation proclamation, including at least three apartment blocks destroyed while residents slept. Starukh said at least 70 people have been killed this month.

Air raid sirens sounded over Kyiv for a third consecutive day, even as residents cleaned up after the earlier strikes.

“It is not that they are fighting the military, they are just driven by the desire to destroy, destroy, to destroy us,” said Yulia Datsenko, a 38-year-old paramedic, as she surveyed the damage to her apartment.