Zelensky meets Trump as conflict rages

KYIV/THE HAGUE — Russia and Ukraine continued to trade strikes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies at a NATO summit on Wednesday to bolster Ukraine's defense industry.

Zelensky had a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the summit in The Hague on Wednesday.

He hailed the meeting as "long and substantive", saying the two talked about achieving a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Trump's administration has blocked Ukraine's bid to join NATO.

Although he was not invited to the NATO summit itself, Zelensky pressed member states in the Netherlands to boost their investment in Ukraine's growing defense sector and crack down on the supply of foreign components that he said Russia uses to build its weapons.

Zelensky spent Tuesday in The Hague shuttling from meeting to meeting. He got a pledge from the summit host, the Netherlands, for military aid including new drones and radars to help knock out Russian drones.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK will provide 350 air defense missiles to Ukraine, funded by 70 million pounds ($95 million) raised from interest on seized Russian assets.

On the battlefield, a Russian missile attack in southeastern Ukraine on Tuesday killed at least 17 people and caused sweeping damage, officials said.

The two-part strike killed 15 and wounded more than 200 in the regional capital Dnipro, said Governor Serhiy Lysak, where a blast wave showered scores of train passengers with broken glass.

Among the wounded were at least 18 children, he added.

The rare daytime strike also damaged dozens of apartment buildings and educational facilities among other sites, according to Mayor Borys Filatov, who said the attack caused an "unprecedented amount of destruction" in the city.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone attacks overnight damaged a grain facility, a school, residential houses and a sports complex in Russia's southern region of Rostov on the Ukrainian border, Russian authorities said on Wednesday.

The Russian defense ministry said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that its units destroyed a total of 40 Ukrainian drones overnight over several Russian regions and the Crimean Peninsula. Seven drones were downed over the Rostov region.

Rostov Governor Yuri Slyusar said on Telegram that there were no injuries in result of the strikes, but the attack sparked a fire at a sports complex and damaged a high school and two apartment buildings in the city of Taganrog.

In the town of Azov, situated on the Don River about 16 km from the Sea of Azov, the attack damaged a grain storage warehouse and an industrial facility, Slyusar said.

Agencies via Xinhua