Western army trainers in Ukraine ‘not immune from strikes’
MOSCOW
Western army instructors who train Ukrainian soldiers in the country would have no "immunity" from Russian strikes, the Kremlin said yesterday, amid reports that France could dispatch military trainers to Ukraine.
Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrsky said last week that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country, but Kiev's Defense Ministry later walked back the claim.
"Any instructors who are engaged in training the Ukrainian regime do not have any immunity. It does not matter whether they are French or not," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
French President Emmanuel Macron has refused to rule out deploying troops to Ukraine, despite reluctance from other NATO members and furious warnings from Moscow.
France does not officially have military personnel assisting or training Ukrainian forces in Ukraine at the moment.
Russia has warned against such a step, and previously vowed to destroy any Western military hardware sent to the country.
Ukraine's defense minister said June 3 it was still in talks with Paris and other allies on the issue of instructors.
Meanwhile, Kiev said yesterday that Italy would supply Ukraine with another air defense system, weapons that senior Ukrainian officials have been urging their allies to send to fend off Russian aerial assaults.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says his country urgently needs at least seven more systems, including two just to defend the eastern Kharkiv region, where Moscow recently launched a fresh ground offensive.
"Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani confirmed that his country will provide Ukraine with a second SAMP/T air defense system," Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president's, office announced on social media.
An Italian government source confirmed to AFP the announcement from Yermak, without elaborating.
The news came as regional Ukrainian officials said eight people had been wounded in overnight Russian attacks in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and also in the eastern Kharkiv region.
The head of the southern Kherson region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia, separately said that Russian artillery fire had killed an elderly woman in her yard in the village of Veletynske.
Ukraine has recently warned of more, and longer, power outages throughout the country in the wake of Russia's latest missile and drone barrage targeting power plants over the weekend, stretching Kiev's air defense capacity.
The Kremlin says it only targets Ukrainian military infrastructure and that the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine will only prolong the war and will not change the conflict's outcome.