President Macron wrote in X: “It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression.” The Patriot air defense system is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of shooting down high-speed ballistic missiles used by Russia in its war in Ukraine. Russia has attacked Ukraine – especially the capital, Kiev – with ballistic missile attacks in recent months. Hard-to-intercept, super-fast weapons reach their target in a matter of minutes, making it virtually impossible for people to reach underground shelters in time. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Ukraine’s attacks, which kyiv says seek to cut off funding for Moscow’s war effort, had opened a “Pandora’s box” of Russian retaliation. But Ukraine’s allies in the Coalition of the Willing – an initiative led by France and Britain – will meet on Monday to consider how to increase pressure on Moscow to stop its invasion. Diplomacy has stalled with the United States, which had mediated several rounds of direct talks between kyiv and Moscow but is now focused on its war with Iran. Macron expressed his “horror and emotion” to Zelenskyy over the attack on a shopping center in the city of Kryvyi Rih, which killed 16 people as rescuers searched through the rubble of the site in the president’s hometown. Russia fired a ballistic missile toward kyiv in the middle of the day, while German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was visiting on Saturday for talks with Zelenskyy. Two people were killed and several injured in the Boryspil district, on the eastern outskirts of the city. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had attacked trucks equipped to transport long-range drones near kyiv, as well as targets linked to the Ukrainian military in the Odessa region on the Black Sea. The governor of the Odessa region, Oleg Kiper, said three people had been injured, including a 16-year-old girl, in a “prolonged and combined strike” that affected a house and grain silos. At least four people were killed in a series of attacks in the border region of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said. Ukrainian drones killed at least 10 people in strikes on targets across Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including a warehouse owned by online retailer Ozon and an industrial facility, Russian officials said Saturday. Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, said in a statement on Telegram that the attack had caused injuries. The attack is the first against Ozon after weeks of drone strikes against its larger rival, Wildberries, which Ukraine has launched as part of a broader campaign against the economic infrastructure underpinning Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the Crimean peninsula, at least two people were killed and 10 injured when a Ukrainian drone crashed into a city bus, Moscow-backed Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said. The peninsula was seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014. In the Luhansk region, a province in eastern Ukraine controlled almost entirely by Russia, Moscow-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said two civilians, including a 16-year-old boy, had been killed and nine more wounded.
