KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met the leaders of the British and French armed forces in Kyiv Saturday to discuss the potential deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force to Ukraine, despite the reluctance of U.S. President Donald Trump to provide security guarantees.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense said that officials addressed the structure, size and composition of any future “reassurance force,” while the chief of the defense staff, Adm. Antony Radakin, emphasized that the U.K. would look to “build on the formidable capabilities of the Ukrainian army and put them in the strongest possible position to deter Russian aggression.”
The weekend discussions are planned to set the ground for a further meeting between defense ministers in Brussels and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday.
Britain has been promoting the idea of a European-led peacekeeping force for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire but it has said such a force needed a U.S. “backstop” to make it credible in the face of possible Russian reprisals.
Building a force big enough to act as a credible deterrent — U.K. officials have talked about possibly 10,000 to 30,000 troops — would be a considerable effort for nations that shrank their militaries after the Cold War but are now rearming.
Trump, who has been pushing for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, temporarily paused military aid to Kyiv and has repeatedly said that the country will never join the NATO military alliance.
Death toll from from Friday’s strike rises to 18
The death toll from a Russian missile strike in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has risen to 18, including nine children, regional Governor Serhii Lysak said Saturday.
A further 72 people were injured in Friday’s attack, the youngest a 3-month-old. About half of them remained in the hospital, with 17 in serious condition.
“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”
Kryvyi Rih is Zelenskyy’s hometown.
“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings — hitting a playground and ordinary streets,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Friday that it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting with unit commanders and Western instructors was taking place.
Russian military claimed that the strike killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.
A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.
Russian forces launched 92 drones into Ukraine overnight, with 51 shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian air force wrote on social media Saturday. A further 31 decoy drones also failed to reach their targets, it said.
Elsewhere, one person died Saturday in the Russian-occupied town of Horlivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region due to shelling, Moscow-installed Gov. Denis Pushilin said. Security officials told Russian state news channels that they had destroyed 28 Ukrainian drones over the Donetsk region overnight, marking the first time that the occupied territory had been targeted by such long-range strikes.
Zelenskyy criticizes US ambassador’s response
Zelenskyy blamed the daily strikes on Russia’s unwillingness to end the war: “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to increase pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s air defenses.
He also criticized the response of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to the strike. Ambassador Bridget A. Brink posted on social media Friday that she was “horrified” by the strike in Kryvyi Rih. “More than 50 people injured and 16 killed, including 6 children. This is why the war must end,” the post said.
Zelenskyy, who has so far had a strained relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, described the post as “unpleasantly surprising” for not directly naming Russia as the perpetrator of the attack.
“Such a strong country, such a strong people — and such a weak reaction. They are even afraid to say the word ‘Russian’ when talking about the missile that killed children,” he said in a post that also praised countries including Japan, Britain, Switzerland and Germany for their “principled statements.”
“Yes, the war must end. But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade,” he said.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
