Aug 13 (Reuters) – Russia struck Ukraine’s largest Danube grain shipment port overnight, causing damage and setting off a fire, authorities said on Thursday, after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed more U.S. air defence missiles to get through winter.
The port of Izmail, near the Romanian border in the southern region of Odesa, handles exports of Ukrainian grain and other commodities. The Izmail regional state administration said on Telegram the strikes caused damage to port infrastructure and took out power in the southeast of the city.
The attack comes a day after Ukraine hit Novorossiysk, a major grain shipment hub in Russia’s part of the Black Sea.
Romania, a member of NATO and the European Union, scrambled two fighter jets, its defence ministry said on X, adding that an aerial target spent about 10 minutes in national airspace before leaving for Ukraine.
Also in the Odesa region, a Russian drone hit a passenger train, killing the driver and his assistant, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of the Ukrainian Railways, said in a post on Facebook.
Late on Wednesday, Zelenskiy told CNN that Ukraine needs at least 5% of the current U.S. stockpile of Patriot interceptor missiles to ward off surging Russian ballistic missile attacks.
Kyiv has been seeking more PAC-3s, the newest type of Patriot missile capable of downing Russian ballistic missiles. Deliveries of Patriot missiles to Ukraine dwindled after the war on Iran diverted supplies.
In the interview, Zelensky said a 10% share of the current U.S. stockpile of Patriots would be enough to stop all Russian ballistic missile attacks.
“Sell us 5%, we will go through the winter and save people’s lives. If they can sell us 10%, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles. I have 1%,” he told CNN.
Because of their speed and steep trajectory, ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept than drones and cruise missiles.
In July, Russia fired over 450 various missiles at Ukraine, more than a half of them ballistic, Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian air force said on Facebook.
He also said the air force would stop announcing daily figures on downed and suppressed Russian ballistic missiles, and would present them monthly.
(Reporting by Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Clarence Fernandez, William Maclean)
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