Ukraine said on Tuesday that Italy was preparing to provide it with a new anti-aircraft defense system, while Kyiv is increasing its appeals to the West to help it strengthen its control of the skies in the face of Russian bombing.
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“Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani confirmed that his country will provide Ukraine with a second SAMP/T air defense system,” Andriï Iermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, assured on Telegram.
A government Source confirmed this announcement to AFP, without providing further details.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his country needs at least seven additional modern anti-aircraft systems, including two to defend the Kharkiv region (north-east), the target of a Russian offensive since May 10. In particular, he calls for the powerful American Patriot systems.
Eight people were injured in Russian bombings overnight from Monday to Tuesday in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions (south-center), according to Ukrainian authorities.
The governor of the southern Kherson region said separately that Russian artillery fire had killed an elderly woman in her garden in the village of Veletynské.
Ukraine recently warned of more and longer power outages across the country following new attacks on power plants over the weekend, straining Kyiv’s air defense capacity .
The Kremlin assures that it only targets military infrastructure in Ukraine and that the supply of Western weapons to Kyiv will only prolong the war and will not change the outcome of the conflict.
