Ukraine's Zelenskiy presses Nato allies for support amid increasing Russian strikes

Irish Times

9 hours ago

A
Russian
missile attack in southeastern
Ukraine
on Tuesday killed at least 17 people and caused sweeping damage, officials said, as President
Volodymyr Zelenskiy
urged Kyiv's allies at a
Nato
summit to bolster Ukraine's defence industry.
The two-part strike killed 15 and wounded more than 200 in the regional capital Dnipro, said governor Serhiy Lysak, where a blast wave showered scores of train passengers with broken glass.
Among the wounded were at least 18 children, he said.
The rare daytime strike also damaged dozens of apartment buildings and educational facilities among other sites, according to Mayor Borys Filatov, who said the attack caused an 'unprecedented amount of destruction' in the city.
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Two people were also killed in the town of Samar, about 10km from Dnipro, Mr Lysak said, adding that an infrastructure facility was damaged.
The attack came as Mr Zelenskiy pressed Nato member states in the Netherlands to boost their investment in Ukraine's growing defence sector and crack down on the supply of foreign components that he said Russia uses to build its weapons.
Local people carry their things from damaged flats at the site of a rocket strike on a five-storey residential building in Kyiv on Monday. Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA
'This is not a fight where it's hard to choose a side,' he wrote on X in response to the strike. 'Standing with Ukraine means defending life.'
Mr Zelenskiy was also expected to meet US president
Donald Trump
on the sidelines of the summit.
Russia has stepped up air strikes on Ukraine in recent weeks, particularly its capital Kyiv, where 28 people were killed on June 17th in the deadliest such attack this year.
Another 10 people were killed in air attacks on Kyiv and the surrounding region on Monday.
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Ukrainian commander's final dispatch: 'I had hoped my service and sacrifices would be enough, but they haven't'
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After Tuesday's attack on Dnipro, stunned residents surveyed a badly damaged apartment building and battered cars. At a nearby church, windows were blown out and scattered across the altar.
Priest Serhii Narolskyi said he had been holding a service at the time of the attack, which was preceded by an air raid alert.
'It happened in a split second. You opened your eyes, and there were no windows or doors anywhere,' he said. 'Everything was in a half-destroyed state.' – Reuters