U.K. to provide tanks as Russia renews barrage

LONDON— U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised Saturday to ship tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine, amid renewed missile attacks by Moscow targeting multiple Ukrainian cities for the first time in nearly two weeks.

Nine people were killed and 64 wounded in the southeastern city of Dnipro, where a Russian missile strike destroyed a section of an apartment building, regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. Infrastructure facilities were also hit in the western Lviv region, in the Odessa region on the Black Sea and northeastern Kharkiv. Kyiv, the capital, was also targeted.

Sunak made the pledge to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, the British leader’s Downing Street office said in a statement.

It didn’t say when the tanks would be delivered or how many. British media have reported that four British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks will be sent to Eastern Europe immediately, with eight more to follow shortly after.

Zelenskyy tweeted his thanks to Sunak on Saturday “for the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners.”

Ukraine has for months sought to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the U.S. Abrams and the German Leopard 2 tanks, but Western leaders have been treading carefully.

The Czech Republic and Poland have provided Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukrainian forces. Poland has also expressed readiness to provide a company of Leopard tanks, but President Andrzej Duda stressed during his recent visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that the move would be possible only as an element in a larger international coalition of tank aid to Kyiv.

Earlier this month, France said it would send AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles to Ukraine, designated “light tanks” in French. The U.S. and Germany announced the same week that they would send Bradley fighting vehicles and Marder armored personnel carriers, respectively, for the first time.

Sunak’s announcement came as Russian forces fired missiles at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine on Saturday in the first major barrage in days.

In Dnipro, rescuers used a crane to try to evacuate people trapped in the apartment building’s upper stories, some of whom were signaling with the flashlights on their mobile phones, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on Telegram. He also said there were likely people under the rubble.

Earlier in the day, explosions rocked the capital in the first such attack since Jan. 1. The blasts in Kyiv occurred before air sirens sounded, which is unusual. According to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles flying from the north.

“The ballistics are not easy for us to detect and shoot down,” he told local media. The warning about the missile threat was late because of the lack of radar data and information from other sources.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Office Smoke rises from a residential tower in the southeastern city of Dnipro after it was struck during a Russian missile attack. Emergency crews raced to rescue people trapped in the rubble.