KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday vowed stern retaliation for a Russian missile strike in the centre of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that killed seven people and wounded almost 150 others the day before.
“I am sure our soldiers will respond to Russia for this terrorist attack. Respond tangibly,” Zelenskyy said in a video address published in the early hours of Sunday at the end of a visit to Sweden, his first foreign trip since attending a NATO summit in Lithuania last month.
He identified a 6-year-old girl, named Sofia, as among the dead and confirmed that the wounded included 15 children. Further east, Russian forces shelled the city of Kupiansk on Sunday morning, seriously wounding a man, according to Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov. A man was killed later on Sunday in Russian shelling of Vovchansk, also in the Kharkiv region, according to Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry.
Zelenskyy arrived in the Netherlands on Sunday, two days after the country said the US had given its approval to Dutch and Danish authorities to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine’s air force.
At a military air base in the southern city of Eindhoven, Dutch PM Mark Rutte told Zelenskyy that the Netherlands and Denmark were committing to deliver F-16 warplanes to Ukraine. Rutte said the planes would be delivered once unspecified conditions were met. The announcement came minutes after Rutte and Zelenskyy inspected two gray F-16 jets parked in a hangar at the base. The US approval on Friday was seen as a major boost for Kyiv, even though the fighter jets won’t have an impact any time soon on the almost 18-month war.