LONDON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in London on Friday for talks with two dozen European leaders who have pledged military help to shield his country from future Russian aggression if a ceasefire stops the more than three-year war.
The meeting hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also due to assess ways of helping protect Ukraine’s power grid from Russia’s almost daily drone and missiles attacks as winter approaches, enhancing Ukrainian air defenses, and supplying Kyiv with longer-range missiles that can strike deep inside Russia.
The talks aim to step up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding momentum to measures in recent days that have included a new round of sanctions from the United States and European countries that take aim at Russia’s vital oil and gas export earnings.
Putin has so far resisted efforts to push him into negotiating a peace settlement with Zelenskyy and has argued that the motives for Russia’s all-out invasion of its smaller neighbor are legitimate. Russia has also been adept at finding loopholes in Western sanctions.
Starmer greeted Zelenskyy with a hug on the doorstep of 10 Downing St. The two leaders were to hold a lunchtime meeting before being joined by other leaders in the afternoon.
“We’ve got really important business to go through,” Starmer said to Zelenskyy.
Putin’s unbudging stance has exasperated Western leaders. “Time and again we offer Putin the chance to end his needless invasion, to stop the killing and recall his troops, but he repeatedly rejects those proposals and any chance of peace,” Starmer said in written comments ahead of Friday’s meeting.
Ukraine’s Western allies need to resolve some big questions about the future part they will play as Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II heads toward its fourth anniversary next February.
The uncertainties include how they can help fund war-devastated Ukraine, what postwar security guarantees they might be able to provide it, and nail down what Washington’s commitments to future security arrangements might be.
Building a ‘reassurance force’
Zelenskyy and Starmer are expected to be joined at the Foreign Office in London by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof. About 20 other leaders are to join via video link in the meeting of the group dubbed the Coalition of the Willing.
Details of the potential future “reassurance force” are scant, and the London meeting seeks to further develop the idea — even though any peace agreement appears at the moment to be only a distant possibility.
The force is likely to consist of air and naval support rather than Western troops deployed in Ukraine, according to officials. U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey says it would be “a force to help secure the skies, secure the seas, a force to help train Ukrainian forces to defend their nation.”
Its headquarters is expected to rotate between Paris and London for 12-month periods.
The war has shown no sign of subsiding, as a front-line war of attrition kills thousands of soldiers on both sides while drone and missile barrages cause damage in rear areas.
Russia says it has captured Ukrainian villages
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Friday that over the past week its forces have captured 10 Ukrainian villages. The small conquests are part of Russia’s slow but steady slog to envelop the remaining Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region from both the north and the south and create footholds for pressing further west into the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The Defense Ministry also said its forces downed 111 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight, with debris causing damage to homes and infrastructure.
One drone hit an apartment building in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s northwestern edge, injuring five people, including a child, according to Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that air defenses downed three drones heading to Moscow, which forced flights to be suspended at two Moscow airports.
Three other Russian airports briefly suspended flights because of the drone attacks.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said Russian artillery struck a residential block in the southeastern city of Kherson on Friday, killing two people and injuring 22 others, including a 16-year-old.
Also, Russian planes dropped at least five powerful glide bombs on the northeastern city of Kharkiv, injuring six people and damaging homes, according to city mayor Ihor Terekhov.
And for the first time, Russia fired glide bombs in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region Friday, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, calling it “a new, serious threat” in the area.
Russian war bloggers said the military used a new jet-propelled glide bomb with an extended range of up to 200 kilometers (120 miles), significantly increasing Russian deep strike capacity. Glide bombs are significantly cheaper than missiles and carry a heavier payload.
Ukraine’s rail company, Ukrzaliznytsia, announced train delays and route changes in three regions caused by “massive shelling” that damaged infrastructure, which Russian forces have targeted in recent months.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press
