Europe Leaders Urge Weapons Buildup Against Russian Missiles
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- Starmer, Zelenskyy, Macron and Merz met at 10 Downing Street on Sunday and declared an "urgent need" to scale up interceptor production and co-develop anti-ballistic and deep-strike capabilities against Russia's Oreshnik hypersonic missiles, though no financial commitments were disclosed.
- The E3 leaders condemned Russia's "large-scale missile and drone attacks" on Ukrainian cities and its "irresponsible and dangerous" drone incursions into NATO territory, including last month's incident in Romania.
- The leaders called on Putin to agree to an "immediate and complete ceasefire" using the current line of contact as the starting point for any negotiations.
- A Russian drone strike killed three people waiting at a bus stop in southeastern Ukraine, and a separate strike damaged a spent nuclear fuel storage center in the Kyiv region just 15 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
- IAEA chief Rafael Grossi called the Chernobyl-area strike "deeply concerning" given the large amounts of nuclear material held at the facility, and said the agency would visit the site soon.
- Ukraine launched a large-scale drone attack on Saint Petersburg on Saturday, underscoring its growing ability to strike deep inside Russia even as the front line remains largely static under swarms of drones.
Why it matters: Ukraine's interceptor shortage, partly driven by the depletion of US air defense stocks during the Iran war, has left civilians acutely exposed to Russian ballistic missiles, and Europe's E3 is now explicitly asking allies to help rebuild those stockpiles. The meeting produced no money or concrete plan, but it marked a public shift toward treating the Oreshnik threat as a continental defense problem, not just a Ukrainian one.
