Global Courant 2023-04-15 18:37:16
Kyiv, Ukraine –
The death toll from Russian missile attacks on the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk rose to 11 on Saturday as rescue teams tried to reach people trapped in the rubble of an apartment building, Ukrainian authorities said.
Ukraine’s air force said the country would soon have weapons to prevent attacks like that one Friday. Delivery of the US-promised Patriot air defense system was expected in Ukraine sometime after Easter, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.
The predominantly Orthodox Christian country is preparing to celebrate Easter on Sunday. Speaking on Ukrainian state television on Saturday, Ihnat declined to give a precise timeline for the arrival of the defensive missile system, but said the public would know “once the first Russian plane is shot down.”
A group of 65 Ukrainian soldiers completed training at the Fort Still Army Post in Oklahoma last month and returned to Europe to learn more about using the defensive missile system to detect and shoot down enemy aircraft.
Officials at the time said the Ukrainians would then return to their country with a Patriot missile battery, which typically includes six mobile launchers, a mobile radar, a power generator and a control center.
Germany and the Netherlands have also committed to each providing Ukraine with a Patriot system. In addition, a SAMP/T anti-missile system promised by France and Italy should “enter Ukraine in the near future,” Ihnat said this week.
The Ukrainian army is trying to bolster its missile intercept capabilities as it prepares for an expected spring counter-offensive to recapture Russian-held areas of the country. Although more than a year of fighting has depleted arms supplies on both sides, Russian forces have intensified their 8 1/2 month campaign to take the city of Bakhmut, the center of the longest battle of the war so far.
Bakhmut and Sloviansk are both about 45 kilometers apart in the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk.
Rescue teams in Sloviansk have pulled the bodies of two people from under the rubble of a house hit in Friday’s rocket attacks, according to the State Emergency Service. They also searched on Saturday for five people left in the wreckage of the apartment building, as well as the residents of three units who had been reported missing, said Vadym Liakh, the head of the local government.
A new law signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday that would allow military services to send draft messages electronically, rather than deliver them in person, is part of Russia’s preparation for a protracted war in Ukraine, the British government said. Department of Defense in a review Saturday morning.
According to British intelligence, a “uniform register of persons eligible for military service” will be digitally linked to other government departments, allowing Russian authorities to “punish conscription evaders by automatically limiting labor rights and restricting foreign travel”.
As the law does not come into effect until later in the year, the UK Ministry of Defense said the e-notices do not automatically point to a “major new wave of forced mobilisation”, but are part of a “long-term approach to prepare personnel like Russia to anticipate a protracted conflict in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, 52,000 young Russian men have already received draft orders as part of the country’s regular spring call-up, and 21,000 of them have qualified for military service, Colonel Andrey Biryukov, who is in charge of the mobilization, said Saturday.
Biryukov expressed concern that the new e-conscription law portends wider mobilization of reservists, as ordered by Putin in September.
“I would like to emphasize that all military deferrals for civilians will still be valid. And e-draft orders will not be sent en masse,” Biryukov said.
