U.K.’s premier pledges air-defense aid in Kyiv
KYIV, Ukraine — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised 125 anti-aircraft guns and other air-defense technology as he made an unannounced visit Saturday — his first — to Ukraine’s snow-blanketed capital for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The air-defense package, which Britain valued at $60 million, comes as Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s power grid and other key infrastructure from the air, causing widespread blackouts for millions of Ukrainians amid frigid weather.
The package includes radar and other technology to counter the Iran-supplied exploding drones that Russia has used against Ukrainian targets. It comes on top of a delivery of more than 1,000 anti-air missiles that Britain announced earlier this month.
The U.K. has been one of the staunchest Western backers of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Speaking alongside Zelenskyy, Sunak noted that the U.K. has given $2.7 billion in military aid and pledged: “We will do the same again next year.”
“Your homes, your hospitals, your power stations are being destroyed,” Sunak said in announcing the new air-defense package. “You and your people are paying a heavy price in blood.”
Speaking through a translator, Zelenskyy said Russian strikes have damaged around half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
As snowflakes fell, Zelenskyy greeted Sunak at a presidential palace for their talks. He called the two countries “the strongest of allies.” Walking in the snow, they also inspected captured Russian tanks and other destroyed and rusting military hardware used by the invasion forces that are displayed in a Kyiv square.
“With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory. Both of our nations know what it means to stand up for freedom,” the Ukrainian leader said on Twitter.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who stepped down in July, won wide praise in Ukraine for his backing. Sunak is keen to reassure Ukraine’s leaders that there will be no change of stance under his leadership, although when he was U.K. Treasury chief under Johnson he was considered resistant to demands for higher defense spending.
“The courage of the Ukrainian people is an inspiration to the world,” Sunak said. “In years to come, we will tell our grandchildren of your story.”
He pledged that Britain “will stand with you until Ukraine has won the peace and security it needs and deserves and then we will stand with you as you rebuild your great country.”
Sunak also laid flowers at a memorial for the war dead, lit a candle at a memorial for victims of a deadly Soviet-era famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, and met first responders at a fire station, his office said.
GRID STABILIZED
Sunak’s visit came in the wake of a major recent battlefield success for Ukraine: the recapture of the southern city of Kherson.
For the first time since Russia carried out its largest assault last week on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the national energy utility said Saturday that it was again able to use planned, coordinated blackouts to keep the national grid stabilized rather than resorting to emergency power shutdowns.
The first traces of power were also restored to Kherson, which was left without heat, running water and electricity by Russian troops, as they blew up and tore down critical infrastructure before retreating to territory east of the Dnieper River.
“We know that it is very difficult for people, because the occupiers destroyed everything before fleeing,” Zelenskyy said Friday in his overnight address to the nation. “But we will connect everything, restore everything.”
“This is the beginning of a new life,” said 74-year-old Ludmila Olhouskaya, who didn’t have anyone to meet off the train but went to the station to show support. “Or rather, the revival of a former one.”
Ukraine’s government said nearly half of the country’s energy grid has been knocked out by recent Russian missile strikes. Kyiv also estimates that nearly 61,000 square miles of the country could be littered with land mines and other explosives.
So far, only 288 square miles of the land freed from Russian control have been cleared of land mines, improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordnance, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Washington has committed to providing $91.5 million for demining efforts in Ukraine over the coming year.
On the battlefield, Russian forces launched 10 airstrikes, 10 missile strikes and 42 rocket attacks on Ukraine in the past day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Saturday.
In Kherson, the major southern city that Ukrainian forces recaptured more than a week ago, two Russian missiles struck an oil depot — the first time a depot was hit in the city since the Russians withdrew, according to firefighters at the scene. AP reporters saw a huge fire and billowing black smoke.
“There was a strong explosion,” said Valentyna Svyderska, who lives nearby. “We were scared, everyone was scared … Because this is an army that is at war with the civilian population.”
Local authorities were struggling to respond to the blaze, the firefighters said, because Russian forces took the city’s firetrucks and ambulances when they retreated.
Russia is pressing an offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, and Ukraine reported heavy fighting around the city of Bakhmut, the town of Avdiivka and the village of Novopavlivka.
Russian forces claimed to have repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to take back the settlements of Pershotravneve, Kyslivka and Krokhmalne in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv province.
Ukrainian forces said they killed or wounded scores of Russian soldiers during an attack on the village of Mykhailivka in the southern Kherson region, and the wounded were taken to hospitals in Crimea. The claim could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian forces also reported they conducted deadly strikes on the Kinburn Spit in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv province, a key site for Russian electronic warfare.
Russia kept up its strikes on critical infrastructure, with a rocket attack overnight causing a fire at a key industrial facility in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to the region’s chief. Some parts of the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia were left without heat.
The head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm told the BBC that Ukrainians who can afford it should consider leaving the country to relieve pressure on its war-damaged power system.
“If they can find an alternative place to stay for another three or four months, it will be very helpful to the system,” said Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK. “If you consume less, then hospitals with injured soldiers will have a guaranteed power supply.”
The U.K. Ministry of Defense noted Saturday that Russia conducted its largest-ever debt issuance in a single day, raising $13.6 billion on Wednesday. It said debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defense spending.
FUNERAL IN POLAND
In Poland, a funeral was held Saturday for one of the two men who died when a missile landed there this week, according to the state news agency PAP. A military honor guard and Polish and Ukrainian representatives joined the man’s family and members of the community.
NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance have both said the missile strike in an eastern farming region appeared to be unintentional and was probably launched by air defenses in neighboring Ukraine. Russia had been bombarding Ukraine at the time.
White roses were placed on the wooden casket of Boguslaw Wos, described by the Polish state news agency PAP as a 62-year-old warehouse manager.
Wos and another man died Tuesday in Przewodow, a small farming community 4 miles from the border with Ukraine as that country was defending itself against a barrage of Russian missiles directed at Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
Officials from Poland, NATO and the United States say they think Russia is to blame for the deaths no matter what because a Ukrainian missile would not have gone astray in Poland had the country not been forced to defend itself against Russian attacks.
A Polish investigation to determine the source of the missile and the circumstances of the explosion has been launched with support from the U.S. and Ukrainian investigators. The Pentagon sent a small team of forensics and explosive ordnance experts to the missile impact site, a senior defense official said Friday on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss details.
At the funeral, Border Guard officers in fatigues saluted as a hearse arrived at the church, with snow falling. After the funeral Mass, the officers played a funeral march, leading a procession to the village cemetery, followed by the hearse and many mourners.
A military honor guard and Polish officials and Ukrainian representatives joined the man’s family and members of the community. Ukraine’s consul general in the nearby city of Lublin placed a wreath in the colors of Ukraine, PAP reported.
The other victim, a 60-year-old tractor driver, is to be buried today.
“Your homes, your hospitals, your power stations are being destroyed. You and your people are paying a heavy price in blood.”
— British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, announcing a new airdefense package for Ukraine