Kyiv said Tuesday that Italy would supply Ukraine with another air defense system, weapons that senior Ukrainian officials have been urging their allies to send to fend off Russian aerial assaults.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country urgently needs at least seven more systems, including two just to defend the eastern Kharkiv region, where Moscow recently launched a fresh ground offensive.
“Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani confirmed that his country will provide Ukraine with a second SAMP/T air defense system,” Andrei Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, announced on social media.
A government source confirmed to AFP the announcement from Yermak, without elaborating.
The announcement came as regional Ukrainian officials said eight people had been wounded in overnight Russian attacks in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and also in the eastern Kharkiv region.
Ukraine has recently warned of more — and longer — power outages throughout the country in the wake of Russia’s latest missile and drone barrage targeting power plants over the weekend, stretching Kyiv’s air defense capacity.
The Kremlin says it only targets Ukrainian military infrastructure and that the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine will only prolong the war and will not change the conflict’s outcome.