The entrance to the Recknitztal barracks, home to the 24th anti-aircraft missile group, on the left is a mobile launch pad for the Patriot air defense system.
Bernd Vostnik | Image Alliance | Getty Images
The death toll from Russian missile strikes on the eastern city of Sloviansk rose to 11 on Saturday, Ukrainian authorities said, as rescue teams tried to reach people trapped under the rubble of an apartment building.
Ukraine’s air force said the country would soon have weapons to try to prevent attacks like the one on Friday. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ihnat, said that the delivery of the Patriot air defense system promised by the United States was expected in Ukraine sometime after Easter.
The primarily Orthodox Christian country prepares to celebrate Easter Sunday. Speaking Saturday on Ukrainian state TV, Ihnat refused to give an exact timetable for the missile defense system’s arrival but said the public would know “as soon as the first Russian plane is shot down”.
A group of 65 Ukrainian soldiers completed their training last month at Fort Sill, a US Army outpost in Oklahoma, and returned to Europe to learn more about using the defensive missile system to track and shoot down enemy aircraft.
The officials said at the time that the Ukrainians would then return home with a Patriot missile battery, which typically includes six mobile launchers, a mobile radar, a power generator, and an engagement control center.
Germany and the Netherlands also pledged to provide the Patriot system to Ukraine. In addition, Ehnat said this week that the SAMP/T anti-missile system pledged by France and Italy “should enter Ukraine in the near future.”
The Ukrainian military is looking to boost its ability to intercept missiles as it prepares for an expected spring counter-offensive to retake Russian-occupied regions of the country. Although more than a year of fighting had depleted arms supplies on both sides, Russian forces intensified their 8-and-a-half-month campaign to capture the city of Bakhmut, the focus of the war’s longest battle so far.
Bakhmut and Sloviansk are located about 45 kilometers (28 miles) apart in Donetsk Province, eastern Ukraine.
Rescue teams in Sloviansk have recovered the bodies of two people from the rubble of a house hit in the missile strikes on Friday, according to the state emergency service. On Saturday, they searched for five people who remained under the rubble of the apartment building, as well as residents of three units reported missing, said Vadim Lyakh, the head of the local government.
On the other hand, a 48-year-old woman and her 28-year-old daughter were killed on Saturday after Russian forces bombed a neighborhood in the city of Kherson, the regional administration reported on Telegram. Russian forces occupied the southern port city in the early months of the war, but Ukrainian forces recaptured it in November, one of the most notable battlefield defeats for Moscow.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an assessment on Saturday morning that a new law signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which allows military offices to send draft notices electronically rather than deliver them in person, is part of Russia’s preparation for a protracted war in Ukraine.
According to British intelligence, the “Unified Register of Personnel Eligible for Military Service” will be digitally linked to other government services, allowing the Russian authorities to “punish draft evaders by automatically limiting employment rights and restricting travel abroad.”
Because the law did not come into force until later in the year, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said the electronic notifications did not automatically indicate a “major new wave of coercive mobilization” but formed part of “a longer-term approach to delivering as Russia expects a protracted conflict in Ukraine” .
Meanwhile, 52,000 young Russians have already received draft orders as part of the country’s regular spring call-up, and 21,000 of them are eligible for military service, Colonel Andrei Biryukov, in charge of mobilization, said Saturday.
Biryukov addressed concerns that the new electronic conscription law heralded a broader mobilization of reservists, like what Putin ordered in September.
“I would like to assure that all army deferrals for citizens will remain in force. Electronic recruitment orders will not be sent in large quantities,” Biryukov said.