Kyiv, Jul 13: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due in Paris on Monday for talks with two dozen European leaders helping Kyiv fight Russia’s invasion, with the war now in its fifth year.
European foreign ministers were also meeting separately in Brussels where they were expected to discuss Ukraine’s needs and Russia’s threats to the continent.
Both Kyiv and its European backers are keen to press home Ukraine’s recent successes and compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the fighting, although Moscow has shown no willingness to compromise despite a yearlong peace effort by the Trump administration.
Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have in recent months given it an edge, analysts and Western officials say.
Its strikes on supply routes behind the front line have robbed the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield and made its progress slow and costly, they say.
Kyiv’s forces have especially targeted supplies to Crimea, triggering the worst fuel crisis on the Black Sea peninsula since it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, and delivering a blow to the Kremlin’s narrative that Moscow is winning the war.
Zelenskyy is keen to move quickly on plans for jointly developing with European countries anti-ballistic air defences that can help stop Russia’s devastating attacks on Ukraine’s power grid.
“Everyone in the world sees that Ukraine needs more air defense, more protection of life,” Zelenskyy said Monday on social media after the latest overnight attacks across Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump’s pledge last week to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air-defence systems could mark a major breakthrough for Kyiv. However, experts and Ukrainian officials warn that turning the idea into real weapons would likely take years.
The meeting in Paris of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, which brings together more than 30 countries supporting Ukraine, was expected to include around 25 heads of state and government.
The notably high number of leaders appeared to be a demonstration of long-term commitment to Ukraine and a warning to Russia, as Moscow tests Europe’s resilience.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced Monday that he would summon the Russian ambassador to France and impose sanctions against Russian hackers. He told BFMTV-RMC that the issue is about “a vast cyber campaign aimed at sabotage and espionage, carried out by Russia in about 10 European countries”.
Ukraine’s neighbours have also felt the war’s impact.
In the latest incident, a drone launched during Russian overnight attacks on Ukraine’s Odesa region crashed and exploded on Moldova’s territory, Moldova’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday. It said the incident was “serious and unacceptable”.
Zelenskyy was travelling to the French capital after the death of US Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters in Washington, and amid a major and incomplete reshuffle of his government that saw Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko step down on Sunday.
Ukraine has aimed at targets deep inside Russia with its domestically developed long-range drones and missiles, matching and sometimes exceeding the number of drones used in relentless Russian aerial attacks.
Russian air defences downed 350 Ukrainian drones heading toward Moscow since late Sunday, including 50 near the capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Andrei Vorobyov, the head of the region around Moscow, said that 81 Ukrainian drones were downed overnight.
Vorobyov said that three people were killed and another three were injured by the Ukrainian attack in the Pionersky settlement just outside Istra in the western part of the Moscow region. Five private houses were set ablaze, he said.
The Ukrainian air force, meanwhile, said Russia launched 134 long-range strike drones and three guided aviation missiles at Ukraine. Air defences shot down or jammed all the missiles and 123 drones, while six drones caused damage at five locations, it said.
In the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, over 70 people were hospitalized after a series of recent Russian strikes damaged 11 apartment blocks, according to military administration head Ivan Fedorov.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, the country’s main domestic security agency, said it had thwarted a Ukrainian plan for a drone attack on the Ukrainka air base in the far eastern Amur region, and the Shagol air base in the Chelyabinsk region in the southern Urals.
The agency said small drones were smuggled into Russia’s western Bryansk region using air balloons and bigger transport drones, and then taken by car close to the air bases by Ukrainian agents.
The agency said it had arrested Ukrainian agents and their accomplices and seized 24 drones. It said the purported plot was part of a series of planned drone strikes on military infrastructure “unprecedented in its scale and the level of threat.”
A Ukrainian covert operation just over a year ago, code named Operation Spiderweb, destroyed or damaged nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet with drones sneaked into Russian territory, according to Ukrainian officials. (AP)
