Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived Wednesday in Lithuania ahead of visits to Estonia and Latvia, as Ukraine seeks more help to bolster its air defenses amid Russia’s intensified missile and drone onslaughts in the latest development of the 22-month war.
The focus of the Baltic trip, Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram channel, will be security concerns, Ukraine’s hopes to join the European Union and NATO, and building partnerships in drone production and electronic warfare capacities.
The small countries on the Baltic Sea are among Ukraine’s staunchest political, financial and military supporters.
They have pushed Kyiv’s other Western allies to provide increasingly sophisticated weapons since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia’s belligerence toward its neighbor Ukraine has some in the Baltics worried that they could be Moscow's next target.
The three countries were seized and annexed by Josef Stalin during World War II before gaining independence again with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. They joined NATO in 2004, placing themselves under the military protection of the U.S. and its Western allies.
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Zelenskyy, in his Telegram message, expressed gratitude for their “uncompromising” support of Ukraine over the past 10 years, referring to 2014 when Russia’s aggression started with the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Russia’s recent escalation of missile and drone attacks is stretching Ukraine’s air defense resources, a Ukrainian air force official said Tuesday, leaving the country vulnerable unless it can secure further weapons supplies.
Zelenskyy’s energetic international diplomacy during the war has been essential to maintain pressure on friendly countries to keep supplying Kyiv with billions of dollars in weaponry, from German Leopard tanks to U.S. Patriot missile systems and Storm Shadow cruise missiles from the U.K.
However, material support has recently tailed off. A plan by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to send to Kyiv billions of dollars in further aid is stuck in Congress, and Europe’s pledge in March to provide 1 million artillery shells within 12 months has come up short, with only about 300,000 delivered so far.
(AP)
