KYIV - Kyiv can expect more deliveries of heavy weapons from Western countries soon, NATO said Monday, as Russian President Vladimir Putin praised his forces after their claimed capture of a Ukraine town. Dramatic rescue efforts unfolded at a tower block in the eastern city of Dnipro, shattered by a Russian missile strike that left 30 people dead and an estimated 34 people missing. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the Russian people’s “cowardly silence” over the attack, noting that Ukraine had received messages of sympathy from around the world over “this terror.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine could expect more heavy weapons following Kyiv’s requests to its allies for the vehicles, artillery and missiles it says are key to defending itself. “The recent pledges for heavy warfare equipment are important -- and I expect more in the near future,” Stoltenberg told Germany’s Handelsblatt daily, ahead of a meeting this week of a group that coordinates arms supplies to Kyiv. Days after Russia claimed to have taken Soledar in eastern Ukraine, a salt-mining outpost home to 10,000 before the conflict, Putin hailed it as a major success. “There is a positive dynamic, everything is developing according to plans,” Putin said, in an interview broadcast Sunday. “I hope that our fighters will please us more than once again.” Russia’s defence ministry announced this week it had “completed the liberation” of Soledar. This could be a key gain as Russian forces push towards what has been their main target since October: the nearby transport crossroads of Bakhmut. Ukraine has denied Moscow’s claims, insisting that heavy fighting continues in Soledar. But on Sunday, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said “Ukrainian forces are highly unlikely to still hold positions within the settlement of Soledar itself”. Russia’s victory there, if that is what it proves to be, follows months of humiliating setbacks. Both sides have conceded heavy losses in the battle for the town. Rescuers in Dnipro meanwhile continued their search for survivors of Saturday’s missile strike on a tower block that has so far claimed 30 lives. Dozens of people were also wounded in the attack, said regional adviser Natalia Babachenko in televised comments. A 15-year-old girl was among the dead, officials said, after dozens of people were pulled from the rubble, including a woman brought out by rescuers Sunday. Babachenko said that “between 30 an 40 people are still under the rubble.” Survivor Kateryna, 17, said she was at home with her father when the missile struck. “I fell into a stupor, I didn’t even know what to do. I started crying and screaming a lot,” recalled Kateryna, wrapped in a powder-blue puffer jacket and hat. According to the Ukrainian army, the block was hit by an X-22 Russian missile that it lacked the capacity to shoot down. “Only anti-aircraft missile systems, which in the future may be provided to Ukraine by Western partners... are capable of intercepting these air targets,” it said.
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