Slovakian Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad says the first multinational NATO units with the Patriot air defence systems have been moving to his country.
Nad said on Sunday the transfers will continue over the few next days.
Germany and the Netherlands have agreed to send their troops armed with the Patriots to Slovakia. The troops are some of the 2,100 soldiers from several NATO members, including the United States, who will form a battlegroup on Slovak territory as the alliance boosts its defences in its eastern flank following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Nad says the Patriots will be initially deployed at the armed forces base of Sliac in central Slovakia before they will be stationed at various places to protect the largest possible Slovak territory.
He thanked Germany and the Netherlands for their "responsible decision" to fundamentally boost Slovakia's defences.
At the same time, Nad said, the Patriots would not replace the Russian-made S-300 air-defence system his country has relied on, calling their deployment "another component to protect Slovakia's airspace."
Nad previously has said his country will be willing to provide its S-300 long-range air defence missile system to Ukraine on condition it has a proper replacement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned the S-300s when he spoke to U.S. lawmakers by video Wednesday, appealing for anti-air systems that would allow Ukraine protect its airspace against Russian warplanes and missiles. NATO members Bulgaria, Slovakia and Greece have the S-300s.
The Slovak minister said Sunday his country will work to replace the S-300s with a different system that would be compatible with the systems used by the allies.
Fighting continues in Ukraine
Ukrainian authorities said the Russian military bombed an art school where about 400 people had taken refuge in the port city of Mariupol, where Zelensky said an unrelenting siege by Russian troops would go down in history for what he said were war crimes.
Local authorities said the school's building was destroyed and people could remain under the rubble. There was no immediate word on casualties. Russian forces on Wednesday also bombed a theatre in Mariupol where civilians were sheltering, authorities have said.
"To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come," Zelensky said in his nightly video address to the nation.
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Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, has been under bombardment for at least three weeks and become a symbol of the horror of Russia's war in Ukraine. Local authorities have said the siege has cut off food, water and energy supplies, and killed at least 2,300 people, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves.
- Ukraine's Zelensky says siege of Mariupol 'a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come'
Russian forces have surrounded the battered city and pushed deeper into it in recent days. Heavy fighting shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help Saturday.
"Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth," Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said from a rubble-strewn street in a video addressed to Western leaders that was authenticated by The Associated Press.
The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war's worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since the Second World War.
Details also began to emerge Saturday about a rocket attack that killed as many as 40 marines in the southern city of Mykolaiv on Friday, according to a Ukrainian military official who spoke to The New York Times.
It wasn't clear how many marines were inside at the time, and rescuers continued searching the rubble of the barracks.
A senior Ukrainian military official, who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity to reveal sensitive information, estimated that as many as 40 marines were killed, which would make it one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war.
Russia claims new strikes with hypersonic missiles
Meanwhile the Russian military reported Sunday that it had carried out a new series of strikes on Ukrainian military facilities with long-range hypersonic and cruise missiles.
The Russian Defence Ministry's spokesperson, Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said a Kinzhal hypersonic missile hit a Ukrainian fuel depot in Kostiantynivka, a city near Mykolaiv. The Russian military said Saturday that it used a Kinzhal for the first time in combat to destroy an ammunition depot in Diliatyn in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.
Russia has said the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, has a range of up to 2,000 kilometres and flies at 10 times the speed of sound. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Saturday that the U.S. couldn't confirm the use of a hypersonic missile in Ukraine.
Konashenkov said Kalibr cruise missiles launched by Russian warships from the Caspian Sea were also involved in the strike on the fuel depot in Kostiantynivka and were used to destroy an armour repair plant in Nizhyn in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine.
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Despite the siege in Mariupol, many remained struck by Ukraine's ability to hold back its much bigger, better-armed foe. The U.K.'s Defence Ministry said Ukraine's airspace continued to be effectively defended.
"Gaining control of the air was one of Russia's principal objectives for the opening days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress," the ministry said on Twitter.
Russia is now relying on weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace to strike targets within Ukraine, the British ministry said.
Deaths estimated in the thousands
Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely, but even conservative figures are in the low thousands. Russia had 64 deaths in five days of fighting during its 2008 war with Georgia. It lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, and more than 11,000 in years of fighting in Chechnya.
Russia would need 800,000 troops — almost equal to its entire active-duty military — to control Ukraine long-term in the face of armed opposition, said Michael Clarke, former head of the British-based Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank.
"Unless the Russians intend to be completely genocidal — they could flatten all the major cities, and Ukrainians will rise up against Russian occupation — there will be just constant guerrilla war," said Clarke.
UN bodies have confirmed more than 902 civilian deaths since the war began, though they concede the actual toll is likely much higher. The UN says more than 3.3 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees.
Evacuations from Mariupol and other besieged cities proceeded along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors that Ukraine and Russia agreed to on Saturday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, and a total of 6,623 people left.
Russia, Ukraine talks progressing, Turkey says
Ukraine and Russia have held several rounds of negotiations aimed at ending the conflict but remain divided over several issues, with Moscow pressing for its neighbour's demilitarization and Kyiv demanding security guarantees.
Turkey's foreign minister says Ukraine and Russia are close to an agreement on "fundamental issues" and that negotiations were ongoing.
Speaking on Sunday in Antalya, Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey was in touch with negotiators on both sides and was acting as a "mediator and facilitator." He said he could not divulge details but that there was "momentum."
