LONDON – A high-stakes diplomatic meeting focused on the future of Western backing for Ukraine is set to take place in the British capital this Sunday, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer will host senior leaders from Ukraine, France and Germany to coordinate ongoing support for Kyiv amid the grinding war with Russia.
The summit brings together Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron and newly installed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, representing the E3 – Europe’s three most prominent heavyweight powers that have stood at the forefront of international support for Ukraine ever since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Both the United Kingdom and France currently lead the ‘coalition of the willing’ initiative, which works to deliver binding security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any future negotiated peace settlement.
Sunday’s talks come on the heels of a major development on the battlefield: a large-scale Ukrainian drone assault that targeted Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, highlighting Kyiv’s steadily improving capacity to strike targets deep within Russian territory. The attack, carried out on Saturday, left three people with minor injuries according to local governor Alexander Beglov, who urged residents across the city to remain indoors for their safety during the incident.
The strike hit less than 24 hours after Saint Petersburg wrapped up its flagship annual economic forum, a event Russian President Vladimir Putin had used to frame the war in Ukraine as a distant conflict disconnected from everyday life in Russia. The assault delivered a public embarrassment for the Kremlin, undermining that narrative for both domestic and international audiences.
This exchange of long-range strikes comes as the overall front line in the war remains largely deadlocked, with mass drone deployments blunting any large-scale territorial advances from either side. Both Moscow and Kyiv have increasingly turned to deep strike operations to gain a strategic advantage more than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, with no clear diplomatic or military end to the conflict in sight.
The meeting also follows a sharp rejection of diplomatic outreach from Putin, who turned down Zelenskyy’s recent public proposal for direct face-to-face negotiations in a neutral third country on Friday. Putin told reporters he saw “no point” in holding such talks at this time.
Separately, fresh violence was reported on Sunday morning when a Russian strike on the Ukrainian town of Balabyne, located in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, killed three civilians and wounded one more as they waited at a local bus stop. Ivan Fedorov, head of the region’s military administration, confirmed the attack in a post on his official Telegram channel.
This ongoing coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is tracked by the Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.