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| United Kingdom Announces Will Send Sea King Helicopters To Ukraine |
Oslo - United Kingdom (UK) increases its support for Ukrainian resistance against Russia. Most recently, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace announced it would be sending helicopters to Ukraine for the first time.
Three Sea King helicopters will be provided, with the first one already in Ukraine. They are the first pilot aircraft sent by Britain since the Russian invasion began in February. Wallace also said an additional 10,000 rounds of artillery were being sent to help Ukraine secure territory it had retaken from invading troops in recent weeks.
“Our support for Ukraine is unwavering. This additional artillery round will help Ukraine to secure land that has been reclaimed from Russia in recent weeks,” he said during a visit to Norway as reported by The Guardian, Wednesday (23/11/2022).
The new support comes after Rishi Sunak announced an additional $60 million in defense aid when he visited Kiev over the weekend. "The British Navy is providing six weeks of training on Sea Kings in the UK for Ukrainian armed forces and engineers," the UK Ministry of Defence said.
This new support follows a commitment to provide 1,000 surface-to-air missiles and 125 anti-aircraft guns. Wallace was in Norway meeting allied defense ministers on the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. The news comes as Britain's Ministry of Defense says Russia may be close to running out of its stockpile of Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles after launching several to Ukraine since September.
In daily intelligence updates posted on Twitter, the UK Ministry of Defense said Moscow would likely seek to resupply it soon. Meanwhile today's Russian attack killed a newborn in a Ukrainian maternity ward, as well as two others elsewhere. Ukraine's emergency services said a Russian rocket had hit a building overnight in Vilniansk, part of the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
They shared a video of emergency personnel trying to free a man trapped in waist-deep debris from what appeared to be a destroyed maternity ward. "As a result of the rocket attack on the territory of the local hospital, the two-storey building of the maternity ward was destroyed," they said. "There was a woman with a newborn as well as a doctor in the building at the time," they added.
Rescuers said the baby died while women and doctors were rescued from the rubble. According to initial information, no one else was trapped under the rubble.