Ukraine to seek allies’ help to boost air defences, says Zelensky
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will again call on allies to boost its air defences at this week’s meeting in Germany, as US President-elect Donald Trump takes over later this month with a vow to end the almost three-year war quickly.
Zelensky said dozens of partner countries will participate in the meeting of the Ramstein group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday, “including those who can help boost our capabilities not only to defend against missiles but also against guided bombs and Russian aviation”.
He added: “We will discuss this with them and continue to persuade them. The task remains unchanged: strengthening our air defence.”
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will attend the meeting.
In its last few weeks in office, the Biden administration has been pressing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before Trump is sworn in on January 20.
Trump claimed during his election campaign that he could end the war in one day, and his comments have put a question mark over whether the United States will continue to be Ukraine’s biggest – and most important – military backer.
Zelensky said last week that Trump is “strong and unpredictable”, and those qualities can be a decisive factor in his policy approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, and capitalised last year on weaknesses in Ukraine’s defences to slowly advance in eastern areas despite high losses of troops and equipment.
The war’s trajectory is not in Ukraine’s favour. The country is shorthanded on the frontline and needs continued support from its Western partners.
Zelensky said on Saturday night that Russian and North Korean troops had suffered heavy losses in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.
“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” Zelensky said. “This is significant.”
He said last month that 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed and wounded in Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August, dealing a blow to Russia’s prestige and forcing it to deploy some of its troops from a slow-moving offensive in eastern Ukraine.
The incursion did not significantly change the dynamic of the war, and military analysts say Ukraine has lost around 40% of the land it initially captured.
In other developments, nine people were wounded in a Russian guided bomb attack on the border town of Semenivka in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region on Saturday evening, local officials said.
Moscow sent 103 drones into Ukraine overnight into Sunday, Ukrainian officials said. According to Ukraine’s air force, 61 were destroyed and 42 were lost likely due to electronic jamming.
Russia’s defence ministry said 61 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight into Sunday in five regions of western Russia. No casualties were reported but Rostov regional governor Yuri Slyusar said residential buildings and cars had been damaged by falling drone debris.
By Volodymr Yurchuk and Elise Morton, Associated Press