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 defenses that can help stop Russia’s devastating attacks on Ukraine’s power grid.
