Zelenskyy arrives in London for meeting with European leaders | Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to London on Friday to meet with more than 20 European leaders at a time when military and financial efforts to increase military and financial pressure against Russia have been stalled or postponed.

The president attended a meeting of the Coalition of Volunteers hosted by British prime minister Keir Starmer to “discuss how they can put pressure” on Vladimir Putin as the war in Ukraine heads into its fourth winter.

The meeting took place a day after EU leaders failed to make a definitive decision on whether to use frozen Russian central bank assets to finance Ukraine’s defense and the United States remained undecided on whether to supply long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kiev.

Meanwhile, Russia has intensified its bombing of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Electricity and water were cut off in Kiev and the northern city of Chernihiv this week following targeted attacks aimed at breaking popular resistance in Ukraine.

Ahead of the meeting, Starmer accused the Russian President of wanting to prolong the war in which Ukrainian civilians were attacked. “As Putin continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine, we must increase the pressure on Russia from the battlefield to global markets,” he said.

Two children were among seven people killed in a direct hit by Russian shelling of a nursery in Kharkiv this week. Footage from the scene showed firefighters rescuing young children from an area that had been filled with several dozen teenagers just minutes before.

European leaders hope to take advantage of the slowly changing mood in the White House. This week, Donald Trump canceled a planned summit with Putin in Budapest and on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

The US president also began calling for a ceasefire on existing front lines and rejected Russia’s demands for more territory in eastern Ukraine as a condition for ending hostilities. But after a tense meeting with Zelenskyy in Washington a week ago, he refused to agree to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kiev.

Britain sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil in mid-month, but the EU did not, largely because Lukoil supplies Hungary and Slovakia. Instead, the bloc’s leaders agreed on a sanctions package, the 19th against Russia, that would gradually ban imports of liquefied natural gas from the beginning of 2027.

Zelenskyy came to London after his visit to Brussels. EU leaders on Thursday backed away from a decision to use Russia’s frozen assets to finance Ukraine’s defence, despite calls from Ukraine’s president to take swift action to make Moscow pay for its war.

He visited King Charles in Windsor before heading to Downing St to meet Starmer and European leaders.