Zelenskyy says early warning system for Russian missile attacks resumes following call with Rubio
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Kyiv is once again receiving early warnings from its partners about incoming Russian missiles following recent strikes that he said occurred without enough notice, leaving civilians vulnerable.
For at least a week, the Ukrainian leader has said that his country has not received early warnings about ballistic missiles aimed at the capital. Such intelligence, he said, saves lives by allowing the public to be alerted and giving military units time to try to intercept the missiles.
Zelenskyy said the change happened after talks with his American counterparts, including a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We are thankful that intelligence works now, and I’m speaking about early warning, which is very important for our people, for children, adults, civilians, because we can hear when ballistic is coming,” Zelenskyy said on a visit to Norway. “So we are thankful to American side now that it works.”
Speaking to reporters in India, Rubio acknowledged mutual frustration between the U.S. and Ukraine over intelligence sharing and weapons supplies but emphatically denied that the Trump administration has made any changes to previous policy on either issue.
In other developments, Russia unleashed another missile and drone blitz of civilian areas in Ukraine, killing at least nine people, officials said, as Zelenskyy sought more American and European help.
Zelenskyy was joined in Norway by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, who has tried without success to steer Russia and Ukraine toward a settlement to end the war. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb also met with the Ukrainian president in Norway's capital.
Gahr Støre said Witkoff planned to fly to St. Petersburg on Wednesday to meet with Russian leaders, exchange ideas from the Oslo meeting and share proposals from European and American colleagues.
“Today was a good day for peace,” Stubb said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow is willing to listen to new U.S. proposals about Ukraine but doesn’t expect any “miracle” from Washington.
At the White House, President Donald Trump stepped up the pressure on Zelenskyy to come to an agreement with Russia as relations between the two men have soured again.
“We want Zelenskyy to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. We’ve gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss.”
If that doesn’t happen, “I think it’s going to be a very bad thing.”
The conversation with Rubio came after Zelenskyy told a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers Monday that he believes “some political decision has been made to slow down ... support for us.”
Ukraine has nearly run out of American-made Patriot air-defense interceptors that it needs to stop Russian ballistic missiles, according to Zelenskyy, who has pleaded for Washington to send more. But he said the Pentagon is delaying the delivery of missiles that other countries have purchased for Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader also said speed restrictions were still in place on his country's use of Starshield, the military-grade version of U.S. company SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink, hampering battlefield operations.
Trump also has waived sanctions on Russia, a move that Zelenskyy slammed as helping Putin push on with Moscow’s full-scale invasion, which will hit the five-year mark in February.
Zelenskyy said he had “a substantive conversation” with Rubio.
“I am grateful for his readiness to help and his clear position,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
Rubio, who arrived Tuesday in India on an official trip, denied that the U.S. is withholding assistance from Ukraine.
“Nothing has changed,” he told reporters.
The Patriot ammunition Ukraine needs is in short supply and is also required elsewhere in the world, Rubio said.
“There has not been some deliberate political directive to go out and harm Ukraine,” he said.
European countries, worried about Russia’s plans on the continent and viewing Ukraine as a bulwark against Moscow's ambitions, are trying to take up the slack of any falloff in U.S. supplies, but some key assets are American-made.
European countries and European Union institutions have allocated 237 billion euros ($266 billion) to support Ukraine, compared with 115 billion euros ($129 billion) from the U.S., according to Germany’s Kiel Institute, which tracks assistance to Kyiv.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on Tuesday questioned whether U.S. negotiators have been honest brokers in peace efforts. Ukrainian officials say the Trump administration has encouraged Kyiv to surrender land to Russia in return for peace.
“Although American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for … one and a half years now," Ukraine has not surrendered on Putin’s terms "because Europe has been supporting Ukraine,” Kallas said.
Four people were killed and 27 others wounded, including children, in Russian missile and drone attacks on the Kyiv region over the past day, regional police said.
Three were killed and six were wounded in the Obukhiv district, where warehouses were damaged, police said. In the Bucha district, one woman was killed and 21 people were wounded, eight of them children, while hundreds of buildings were damaged, according to police.
On Tuesday morning, three people were killed and four injured when two vehicles caught fire in a Russian attack on the Kyiv-Odesa highway, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. The dead included the driver of a shuttle bus that was hit. The bus transports people from Kyiv to the National Military Memorial Cemetery.
Two more people were killed in a Russian attack Tuesday on warehouses on the outskirts of Dnipro in central Ukraine, authorities said.
National grid operator Ukrenergo reported power outages in 12 regions of Ukraine following the Russian attacks.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its forces carried out drone strikes on logistics centers, port infrastructure and three cargo ships in the port of Reni in the Odesa region. It said that another bulk carrier was hit at sea on its way to Odesa.
Meanwhile, air defenses intercepted 136 Ukrainian drones over multiple Russian regions overnight, the ministry said.
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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin in New York, Stefanie Dazio in Berlin, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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