On Tuesday, April 5, the U.S. State Department approved the potential sale to Taiwan of equipment, training, and other items to support the Patriot Air Defense System in a deal valued at up to $95 million. The package would include training, planning, fielding, deployment, operation, maintenance, and sustainment of the Patriot Air Defense System and associated equipment, the Pentagon said.

On Friday, April 8, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. Army will send a Patriot missile battery to Slovakia to backfill the country’s air defense capabilities. The Slovakian government, in turn, has agreed to give its sole, Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air system to Ukraine to aid in targeting Russian aviation. On Monday, April 11, Russia said that it had used cruise missiles to destroy S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems which had been supplied to Ukraine by an unidentified European country.

Also on Friday, a Russian missile hit a train station in eastern Ukraine where thousands had gathered Friday, killing at least 52 and wounding dozens more in an attack on a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a new, looming Russian offensive, Ukrainian authorities said. The United States believes that Russia used an SS-21 Scarab short-range ballistic missile in the strike. According to a senior Pentagon official, Russia is resupplying and reinforcing its invasion force in eastern Ukraine with an 8-mile long convoy of vehicles heading to the region, indicating a new phase of the war is likely to occur there.

On Sunday, April 10, Russian ally Serbia this weekend took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese antiaircraft system in a veiled operation. Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.

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