Ukraine receives advanced US air defense system
According to EURACTIV, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview broadcast on Sunday (25 September) that Ukraine had received sophisticated air defence systems from the United States.
It was the first acknowledgment that Ukraine had received the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), long sought by Kyiv and whose shipment was approved by Washington late last month.
“We absolutely need the United States to show leadership and give Ukraine the air defence systems. I want to thank President (Joe) Biden for a positive decision that has been already made,” Zelenskyy said, according to an English-language transcript of the interview.
“But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians.”
Zelenskyy also thanked the United States for HIMARS and other multiple rocket-launching systems enabling Ukraine to advance against Russian occupying forces.
Ukraine has staged counter-offensives this month to free from occupation large swathes of territory in northeastern Kharkiv region. It has also made advances in the south.
Russia describes its seven-month-old incursion into Ukraine as a “special military operation” and denies it targets civilian sites.
Russia’s top diplomat on Saturday said regions of Ukraine where widely-derided referendums are being held would be under Russia’s “full protection” if they are annexed by Moscow, amid fears Russia could further escalate the conflict and even use nuclear weapons.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, addressing the UN General Assembly and the world’s media in New York, attempted to justify Russia’s February invasion of its neighbor, repeating Moscow’s false claims that the elected government in Kyiv was illegitimately installed, filled with neo-Nazis and oppressed Russian speakers in the country’s east.
Asked if Russia would have grounds for using nuclear weapons to defend annexed regions of Ukraine, Lavrov said Russian territory, including territory “further enshrined” in Russia’s constitution in the future, “is under the full protection of the state.”
“All of the laws, doctrines, concepts and strategies of the Russian Federation apply to all of its territory,” he said, also referring specifically to Russia’s doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons.
Russia’s doctrine allows the first use of nuclear weapons if the country’s survival is threatened, be it from a conventional attack.
