Closing summary
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago, giving the first official figure for more than a year. Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv that he could not disclose the number of wounded because it would help Russian military planning, Reuters reported.
Russian forces will attempt to conduct another offensive in Ukraine in late May or summer, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday. “We will prepare for their assault. Their assault that began on 8 October has not brought any results, I think,” Zelenskiy told a news conference.
Ukraine has a “clear” plan for a new counteroffensive against Russian forces, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, adding that he could not disclose details publicly. Zelenskiy told a news conference in the capital Kyiv that troop rotations were critically important for the war effort and that Ukraine needed to better prepare its reserve forces.
Some 20 European leaders will gather in Paris on Monday to send Russian president Vladimir Putin a message of European resolve on Ukraine and counter the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is bound to win a war now entering its third year, France said. French president Emmanuel Macron has invited his European counterparts to the Elysee palace for a working meeting announced at short notice because of what his advisers say is an escalation in Russian aggression over the past few weeks.
Several ministers also spoke, including Kyiv’s defence minister, who said that some 50% of Western arms deliveries to Ukraine do not arrive on time; the country’s interior minister affirmed that not a single weapon has crossed the border from Ukraine into the European Union during two years of Russia’s full-scale invasion; while the strategic industries minister said that Ukraine tripled its weapons production last year and 500 companies are now working in the country’s defence sector.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged the West on Sunday to be “bolder” in seizing Russian assets and to send interest already accrued on frozen funds to Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry said that its forces had taken a more advantageous position near Ukraine’s Avdiivka and rebuffed seven Ukrainian counterattacks.
Andriy Yermak, President Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said that Russia could be invited to a peace summit if the Kremlin “want[s] to genuinely end this war”.
Some 160 tons of Ukrainian grain was destroyed at a Polish railway station in an act of “impunity and irresponsibility” as Polish farmers protested against EU regulations, including what they say is unfair competition from their war-torn neighbour’s cheaper produce.
Updated
