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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy travelled to London on Friday for a meeting with more than 20 European leaders at a time when military and financial efforts to ramp up military and financial pressure against Russia are stalled or delayed.
The president participated in a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing hosted by UK prime minister Keir Starmer to discuss “to discuss how they can pile pressure” on Vladimir Putin as the war in Ukraine heads towards its fourth winter.
The gathering comes a day after EU leaders failed to make a firm decision on whether to use frozen Russian central bank assets to fund Ukraine’s defence, while the US havers over whether to supply long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv.
Russia has meanwhile intensified its bombing of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Power and water were out in Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv this week, after targeted attacks aimed at breaking public resistance inside Ukraine.
Ahead of the meeting, Starmer accused the Russian president of wanting to prolong a war in which Ukrainian civilians are coming under attack. “From the battlefield to the global markets, as Putin continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine. We must ratchet up the pressure on Russia,” he said.
Two children were among seven killed this week when a nursery in Kharkiv was directly hit by Russian bombing. Footage from the scene showed firefighters rescuing young children from a site that had been full with several dozen youngsters only a few minutes earlier.
The European leaders hope to capitalise on a slow shifting mood at the White House. This week Donald Trump called off a planned summit with Putin in Budapest, and on Wednesday put sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies.
The US president has also begun to call for a ceasefire along the existing frontlines, rejecting Russian demands for more territory in eastern Ukraine as a condition for ending the fighting. But he declined to agree to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv after a tense meeting with Zelenskyy in Washington a week ago.
Britain placed Rosneft and Lukoil under sanctions in the middle of the month, but the EU has not done so largely because Lukoil supplies Hungary and Slovakia. Instead the bloc’s leaders agreed a sanctions package, its 19th against Russia, that would gradually ban liquefied natural gas imports by the beginning of 2027.
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Zelenskyy arrived in London after visiting Brussels. On Thursday, EU leaders sidestepped taking a decision on using Russia’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine’s defence, despite a plea from the Ukrainian president to take swift action to make Moscow pay for its war.
He visited King Charles at Windsor before heading to Downing St for discussions with Starmer and the European leaders.
